The unheavenly city revisited

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viii /

PREFACE

Although I have worked hardest on clarifying my argument

PREFACE /

, I have

also taken account of some recent developments that seem to be

significant for example , changes in the growth and distribution of population , in the unemployment problem , and in our knowledge about the effects of compensatory education, public health , and other policy areas, On the whole , however , I have found that the wealth of data that have become available since the book was written (the 200 000 pages of the 1970 Census are the most important source) has confirmed , or at any rate supported , the main elements of my earlier analysis. Because the book has proved to be so controversial and because it is being used in a wide variety of college courses , I have cited many more authorities, and a much wider rangeof them , than I did before, I make no pretense of " covering " the literature , however , because this is not intended to be that kind of book and because I take up so many matters in it. This is an e~ - as I said in the preface to the an attempt by a social scientist to think about the problems of the city in the light of scholarly findings, It was never my purpose to write a " how- to- do- " book for the original version

solution of urban problems, One of my main contentions is that we do not know and never can know what the real nature of the problem is let alone what might " work" to alleviate or solve it. Therefore I was and am precluded from making short-run forecasts or from prescribing cures, The " recommendations " in the next- to- the- Iast chapter were intende~assome discerning readers recognized , merely as a take-off point for a discussion of the political circumstances that make such recommendations pointless, To bring my account of the city s development " up to date " by introducing data on the " trends " of the last two or three years such as the apparent decline in heroin use and the apparent drop in some kinds of crime would be a very dubious enterprise, It takes more than a few years to make a " trend. Witness the " crisis of youth unrest" that superseded the " urban crisis " three or four months after this book was first published and within a year or two , disappeared , to be followed by other " crises

in rapid succession. If my essential argument about the economic, and political processes of American city growth is to be either confirmed or disconfirmed , it will have to be not three or four

cultural ,

but twenty or thirty years hence.

For much the same reasons , I cannot find a way to make the book the much less controversial. Clarifying myself will, I trust, reduce , although amount of outcry over views erroneously attributed to me experience tells me that I should not expect too much in this respect. It would have been impossible to be more explicit in saying that the lower class, as I defined it, was not to be equated either with the poor or the black, but this did not deter many people from insisting that I meant the opposite of what I wrote, source of controand I am afraid ineradicable The principal

my main points are deeply subversive of opinions and beliefs to which many highly intelligent and well-

versy, however ,

is that

informed people are wedded, and without which the world would

perhaps be unendurable for them, What most distresses my critics is not that I have (as they suppose) made conjectures that are not in

accord with the facts. Rather it is, first, that I have asserted (and

aiiyone who reflects knows it to be true) that conjectures unsupported,

or slightly supported, by facts are the stuff of which social policies my conjecture is that must always mainly be made, And, second, society (more particularly, Ameriowing to the nature of man and " our serious problems solve can culture and institutions) we cannot "

by rational management. Indeed, by trying we are almost certain to make matters worse,

My " revisit " has therefore not changed the book in any essentials and I am afraid that , although it should be less irritating, those who did not like it before will not like it now. I wish to express my thanks and appreciation to Professors Frank F, Furstenburg of the University of Pennsylvania and Shigeo Nohara of the University of Delaware for their advice and criticism, I am particularly indebted to myoId friend Julius Margolis for his painstaking before-and-after review of the manuscript and to the Fels Center of Government of which he is director for affording me ideal conditions in which to work, Mrs, Rachel Munafo and Mrs. Lenore Stiber gave indispensable assistance as research assistant and secretary- typist respectively. I should like also to acknowledge the help given by Miss Nancy Smith, librarian at the Fels Center, and Dr. David I. Lazar.

.(,

xii I

PREFACE

Kovner , Garth Mangum , Gary T. Marx, Thomas A. Reppetto, David Riesman , Martin Shefter, and Lester C. Thurow. The entire , or almost entire , manuscript was read by Martin Meyerson , Margy EIlin Meyerson , Milton Friedman , Frances Fox Piven , and James Q. Wilson. Margaret Locke and Mark Petri provided research assistance in the early stages ofthe work. Lawrence D. Brown , who prepared the

Contents

manuscript for the press, called attention to and helped eliminate II? numerous confusions of thought; if it were not for him the book would

be in many respects poorer. Mrs. Carla Kirmani was a painstaking typist. I am very grateful to them all. I am grateful also to the Joint. Center for Urban Studies of the Massachusetts Institute of Technol-

Introduction The Logic of Metropolitan Growth

ogy and Harvard University, which supported the undertaking generously over a considerable period.

Although written for this book, Chapter Nine appeared first in JamesQ. Wilson ,

The Imperatives of Class Race: Thinking May Make It So The Problem of Unemployment Several Kinds of Poverty

Enigma (Cambridge , Mass. Harvard University Press , 1968). Chapter Eleven is a much-revised version of an article that appeared in the Fall , 1968 , issue of Daeda-

lus. 1970

ed., The

Metropolitan

c.R.

lOO

127

148

Schooling Versus Education

179

Several Kinds of Crime

'i' ,

Rioting Mainly for Fun and Profit ro. The Future of the Lower Class What Can Be Done? 1 I. 12. The Prospect the Size of the Social Classes on Appendix A: Note

Appendix B: Select List of Writings about The

Chapter Notes

Unheavenly

City

211

234

260 279 287 291

293

THE UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED

INTRODUCTION

conveniently than ever before. They have more and better

more and better schools, more and better transportation housing, , and so on. material welfare the present genera;7f.- By any conceivable measure of tion of urban Americans is, on the whole , better off than any other large group of people has ever been anywhere. What is more

, there is

every reason to expect that the general level of comfort and conve-

nience will continue to rise at an even more rapid rate through the foreseeable future. It is true that many people do not share , or do not share fully, this general prosperity, some because they are the victims of racial prejudice and others for other reasons that are equally beyond their con-

trol. If the chorus of complaint about the city arose mainly from these disadvantaged people or on behalf of them , it would be entirely understandable , especially if their numbers were increasing and their plight were getting worse. But the fact is that until very recently most

of the talk about the urban crisis has had to do with the comfort

convenience , and business advantage of the well-off white majority and not with the more serious problems of the poor , the Negro , and others who stand outside the charmed circle. And the fact also is that the number of those standing outside the circle is decreasing, as is the relative disadvantage that they suffer. There is still much poverty and

much racial discrimination. But there is less of both than ever before. The question arises, therefore , not of whether we are faced with an urban crisis , but rather in what sense we are faced with one. Whose

interest and what interests are involved? How deeply? What should be

done? Given the political and other realities of the situation , what can be done? The first need is to clear away some semantic confusions. Consider the statement , so frequently used to alarm luncheon groups , that more than 70 percent of the population now lives in urban places and that this number may increase to nearly 90 percent in the next two decades if present trends continue. Such figures give the impression of standing room only in the city, but what exactly do they mean? When we are told that the population of the United States is rapidly becoming overwhelmingly urban, we probably suppose this to mean that most people are coming to live in the big cities. This is true in one

sense but false in another. It is true that

most people live closer

physically and psychologically to a big city than ever before; rural

occupations and a rural style of life are no longer widespread.cities On the o

in other hand, t~~rcentage of the population living ab()utth~same 250 000 or more (there are only fif!Y~_~!J(Qf thew) is urban now as it was in 1920. In Census terminology an "

place "

is any

of settlement having a population of 2, 500 or more; obviously places urban 500 are not what we have in mind when we use words like " country is and " city. "! It is somewhat misleading to say that the becoming more urban, when what is meant is that more people are 31 I), and living in places like White River J unction, Vermont (pop. 6, 000). But it is fewer in places like Boston , Massachusetts (pop. 641, misleading, for most of the small urban places are now altogether not close enough (in terms of time and other costs of travel) to large cities to be part of a metropolitan complex.

White River Junction, for

example, is now very much influenced by Boston. The average popudecreasing: lation density in all " urban areas, " however, has been 376 in from 5, 408 per square mile in 1950 to 3, 752 in 1960, to 3, 1970.

A great many so-called urban problems are really conditions that we either cannot eliminate or do not want to incur the"disadvantages The presence of eliminating. Consider the " problem of congestion. , to say of a great many people in one place is a cause of inconvenience the least. But the advantages of having so many people in one place far outweigh these inconveniences , and we cannot possibly have"the eliminate congestion in advantages without the disadvantages. To " the city must mean eliminating the city s reason for being. Congestion inTimes in the city is a " problem" only in the sense that congestion , people come to s Eve is one; in fact, of course Square on New Year it is because , precisely the city, just as they do to Times Square congested. If it were not congested, it would not be worth coming to. Strictly speaking, a problem exists only as we should want something different from what we do want or as by better management we could get a larger total of what we want. If we think it a good thing that many people have the satisfaction of driving their cars in and out of the city, and if we see no way of arranging the situation to get them

,"

4 / THE UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED

INTRODUCTION / 5

in and out more conveniently that does not entail more than offsetting disadvantages for them or others , then we ought not to speak of a traffic congestion problem, " By the same token, urban sprawl is a problem " as opposed to a " condition, " only if (I) fewer people should have the satisfaction of living in the lowfringe of the city, or (2) we might , by better planning, build density homes in the fringe without destroying so much landscape and without incurring costs (for example , higher per-unit construction costs) or forgoing benefits (for example , a larger number of low- income families who can have the satisfaction of living in the low- density area) of greater value than

the saving in landscape, Few problems , in this strict sense , are anywhere near as big as they seem, The amount of urban sprawl that could be eliminated simply by better planning that is , without the sacrifice of other ends that are

also wanted , such as giving the satisfaction of owning a house and

yard to many low- income people is probably trivial as compared to the total urban sprawl (that is , to the " problem " defined simple-

mindedly as " a condition that is unpleasant" Many so-called urban problems (crime is a conspicuous exception) are more characteristic of rural and smalltown places than of cities,

Housing is generally worse in rural areas, for example schools, " Low

, and so are

verbal ability, " Sloan R, Wayland of Columbia Teachers College has written is described as though it could only happen in an urban slum, " Actually, he points out

, all but a very

small

fraction of mankind has always been " culturally deprived " and the task of formal education has always been to attack such conditions.

Most of the " problems "

the average commuter between 2 I and 34 minutes to get to work (the difference in the average time depending upon the population of the metropolitan area), 3 It would, of course, be very nice if the journey to , however, that the

work were much shorter. No one can suppose essential welfare of many people would be much affected even if it were fifteen minutes longer. Certainly its being longer or shorter

would not make the difference between a good society and a bad,

Another matter causing widespread alarm is the decline of the

supposed to constitute

the urban crisis " could not conceivably lead to disaster. They are some of them important in the sense that a bad cold is important , but they are not critical in the sense that a cancer is critical. They have to do with comfort , convenience , amenity, and business advantage , all of which are important , b ut they do not affe

ither the essential welfare of individuals or what may be called th ggod health of the societ Consider , for example , an item that often appears near the top of the list of complaints about the city the journey to work. It takes

e.

museum~nd so

downtown department stores, theaters, restaurants, on, which has resulted from the movement of many well-off people to suburbs, Clearly, the movement of good customers from one place to another involves inconvenience and business loss to many people, especially to the owners of real estate that is no longer in so great demand, These losses, however , are essentially no different from say, a shift of consumers ' tastes those that occur from other causes

valueless. Moreover, I that suddenly renders a once-valuable patent though some lose by the change , others gain by it: the overall gain of

wealth by building in the suburbs may more than offset the loss of it caused by letting the downtown deteriorate, al activity There are those who claim that c ultural and intellectu meor-rtre ore t there flourishes only in big cities and that downtown business districts and the replacement of cities by suburbs threatens the very survival of civilization, This claim is farfetched, to

say the very least, if it means that we cannot have good

good theater (not to mention philosophy, literature ,

unless customers do their shopping in the that are generally

los ()f patronage to

central business district, by which is meant the

music and

and science)

downtown districts of

Oakland , St. Louis , Nashville , Boston, and so on, rather than in the

suburbs around them, Public efforts to preserve the

tricts of these and other cities may perhaps

downtown dis-

be worth what they

although, so far as cultural and intellectual activities are , cost concerned, there is no reason to assume that public efforts would not

bring at least as much return if directed to metropolitan

areas as

wholes, The return, however, will be in the comfort, convenience business advantage of the

essential welfare,

, and

relatively well-off and not in anyone

The same can be said about efforts to " beautify " the cities. That for

~.

~,

~~ .

~,

INTRODUCTION

THE UNHEA VENL Y CITY REVISITED

the most part the cities are dreary and depressing if

not

offensively

the hardest case

of

a, 11 but even there, an elaborate SID Y s ow

d by 25 percent, enough to make improving their appearance rush- hour crowdIng could 6 Another quick and easy even if only a little , cannot be questioned, It is very doubtful , howrtable. com bl e re u hanger reasona Y the strapever , that people are dehumanIzed (to use a favonte word in most cities would be tatl urban transpor of those way 0 pu of who complain about the cities) by the ugliness ~rch ~c regu 1a tions on . the grantIng of of the city or that they eliminate a m ass going out ugly may be granted: the desirability

of

Improv

would be in any sense humanized by its being made beautiful. (If they

transit and taxI franchises, It pr

t the cities are in effect

those who might offer ~ Metropolitan transportation could the publ~c bette~ transpor~atIO therelink arethe a number Florentine Histories areas to see that living in a beautiful city is not in itself networks also easily be Impro ~ed m t ose ay downtown enough to bring out the best in one. So far as their humanity is them - ,,:here, ~xtenslVe w ~~s concerned , the people ::ese areas, according to the Harvard say, Jersey City compare very favorably to with out!ymg cIties an~ to create extenthe Florentines urrently needed of IS ~ems the era of that city s greatest glory. ) At worst , the economist F. Kal ~ t. ,h t John for American city s ugliness - or more its lack is a limited outlay of splendor or sive metrop~litan rapid t~~~SI f Sys charm arrangement and design, occasions loss of ra of visual pleasure, This loss is an important instrumentatIOn, some ~ ca mo one (it is surely much larger than most people realize), but it cannot and most I ~por tantl a po lCY eClSIO kee congestion at very low lead to any kind rovide priority access for pub lC of disaster either 0 p d t for the individual or for the society. levels during peak hours an were humanized , they would doubtless build beautiful cities, but that is an entirely different matter. One has only to read Machiavelli'

Air pollution comes closer than any

of

ing essential welfare , as opposed and busIness advantage, more

Some

suffer various degrees

ity (no one knows

how

to

these problems

people die early because of

to

comfort , convenience of

of

threaten-

their way

to

place obstac ~s I

of

~~: paths

IS,

transit vehicles,

. " f solvIng , amenity, The pnce 0 or a evla m , ' ma

It and many

bad health; there is also some possibil-

me much-talked-about city be lar ely political. Keeppro ems, I t would a ak hours would necessitate p acIng ~e s :~ pe ing congestIOn at low l rom

ear

much) that a meteorological coincidence (an high toll charges on roa s a

when ~' v ery as times grossly

most people want

unfair (as indeed in a way ) over a large city might suddenly kill thousands or use them; some would regar~bt ~;' even tens aredoes that ifwhich any official had the (none is of thousands. Important as it is , however , the air pollution it would be) and so the ~ro , ~ I Ities the of part problem is rather minor as compared to other threats slO ecl make the , to health and author being voted of fear for welfare not generally regarded as " cnses. "4 Moreover , steps are beIng pro e e ould not raise 0 s rus h hour air inversion

ceo

clear the air. The Clean Air Act Amendment of 1970 is out of of to s basically political , so is the revenue reduce pollution from auto emissions (by far the most If the transportatIOn pr o hem I alth our country is in the cities. serious source) of verge to e c e is on the half of what they were in 1967 (the base year) by problem. A great pa taken

to

expected

1980 and

to

a quarter by 1985.

bl '

, Y

When a mayor says :~~t

of

~iS

bankruptcy, he

Many of the " problems " that are supposed to runout a reelection he wants to be to constitute the " crisis means tha~ when t~e time C ?~;S ing mess that was left him by could be quickly and easily solved , or much alleviated , by the applica- able to claim credit for en hen he says that his city. have must tion of well- known measures that lie right at hand. In some instances, means his predecessor. ~hat fih estralg is (I) the taxpayers the money cost :e improvements of these measures would be very small. ance For example tate or fed~ aid ~o the rush- hour traffic problem in the central cities (which , incidentally, 6nneiii)woula rather go without some Importani~\J.p' f gr it themselves; (or of t~e city for

is almost the whole

of

the traffic problem in these cities) could be the Improvem~nt

much reduced and in some cases-eliminated entirely just by staggering would pay

for

or (2) although they

than

It themsetayves I

they would much prefer

had f ey it

working hours in the largest offices and factories. Manhattan presents have some other taxpayers payor

Rarely

if

ever does a mayor who

, , . p:.

~~!

-...-

,'

!!~~_ -,.

... ~. .

8 / THE UNHEA VENL Y CITY REVISITED INTRODUCTION

makes such a statement mean (I) that for the city

to pay for the

takIng the n essa ymeasures to abate it, In other words, a but-not- quite-cntIcal pro ~~ IS one that it would almost(2) that the city could not raise the money even if it were willing to but-notbout quite pay us to do somet mg a force some of its taxpayers into poverty. In short , the " revenue crisis maInly reflects the fact that people hate to pay taxes and that they it is not because parking ter Impen s m think that by crying poverty they can shift some of the bill to someone If some rea hitecture is bad, because depart~use ::c spaces are hard to find, b else. even because taxes are rising, If To some extent , also , the revenue problem of the cities arises from ment store sales are ?~ch ith the essential welfare of ~S t ~e cnsls, It h there isa genui the way jurisdictional boundaries are drawn or , more precisely, from individuals or "":Ith the gOO? ea~h ~f ~he society, not merely with d b what are considered to be inequities resulting from the movement of siness advantage , important as comfort, convenIence, amenIty, an taxable wealth from one sIde of a boundary hne to an that of improvement would necessarily force some taxpayers into poverty; or bad-

bl '

Isas ?mg,

~ther. When . t~ese are. ~ I

many large taxpayers move to the suburbs, the central CIty must tax

ry

define " essential

welfare

whatever may cause people to rIgorously: It IS enough to y of theirorhealth deeply unhappy happyorinofa before their time , to suff~r ~eno ~s ~~pairment who their powers , to waste theIr h es, ~h ir

those who remain at a higher rate if it is to maintain the same level of

services. The " problem " in this case is not that the taxpayers remain are absolutely unable to pay the increased taxes; rather

necessary here 0 ~ tno sa that

, it is way that is less than human a ec

essential welfare, It is harder o w~ ~t I~ meant by the " good health" of they should have to pay more sImply because other people have to indicate in a sentence or tw intain itself as a going of t , e SOCIe ~ bTt a 11 ' y moved away, The simple and costless solution (in all but a political the socIety, ~SIderation' howeve so is its free and demosense) would be to charge nonresidents for services that they receive concern is certaInly a pnmary ~O that they do not want to pay them and that they consider it unfair that

from the CIty or ,

failIng that ,

to redraw the boundary hnes so that

everyone in the metropolitan area would be taxed on the same basis.

cratic character. I n

dby Ju ge

the last ana YSIS, its tendency to pro u

he~!~~'y s ~ciety, t~e n,

the quality of a soci l?ty

irable human types; the ly stays al ive but also moves m

IS o As the historian Kenneth T, Jackson points out , those c~lr~! ~~ties :1:r :~~oe ~~d expression to what IS disunc directIon of giVIng gre hat are declining in numbers of residents lth are doing so tively human Jn general , 0 c ~urse what serves the essential welfare because their state le~ lltur \\li.I1 not perll1it ~h ~m toenla ~ ~;~O , d health of the society; there are !:ioundaries by annexatIOn~ even before the CIvIl War many large of in~ividuals also prom:~e goals conflict. In such cases, the occaSIOns, however" c1tieSWould have been surrounded by suburbs and therefore suft ~f mdlVldua s musb e sacrifice d for the good h~lt essenti~1 w~ fering from the same revenue problem

and~

ted to annex freely.1o

their

w~,

if they had not been permit- of thesociety. ThIS happens ,on a verY large s~al ~ when there is a war nditions about which el1 The t ther but it may. appen a 0 tImes as w to pay the price of solving, or fore are those that affect , or may e If d th concerne, ~r we should be most

That we have not yet been willing alleviating, such " problems " even when the price is a very small ~here is an urban crisis in any . affect , the good health ofthe SO suggests that they are not really critical. Indeed , one might say that these conditions, /d of be constl u ~at matters are not serious (that is , It must , . ultimate sense by definition a, critical problem opl:!l-,": ~ilIi~ -Ea.y a It is a good ~eal easIer onsiderable price to have solved. do not affect eIth~r the :~e~~ra~ welfare of individuals or the good With regard to these problems for which solutions are at hand ce what ones are. It is clear health of the s ~cIety) than It, IS 0 say will know that a real crisis impends when we see the solutions actually however

one'

~that

, we

,t

, that CrIme , pov ~rty, Igno being applied. The solution , tlr:l"t is , will be applied when and only tices are a mong the mo ~t 1I?~~rta when the inconvenience or other disadvantage of allowing the problem to continue unabated is judged to have become greater than

and racial (and other) injus-

~ th~ general conditions affecting is plausible , too , to suppose that ; ~t ;a welfare of mdIvI the essentl these condItIOns have a very Irec bearing upon the good health of

'" 10

: ,'

',

, '",

,

THE UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED

INTRODUCTION

II

t e SOcIety, although in this connection oth er factors that are muc districts in which they live include many blocks of unrelieved squalor, harder to guess ~p e , the nature and strength of the it should not be supposed that the " poverty areas " of the inner cities consensual bonds that hold ~~ eexa socIety, together - may be much more are uniformly black, poor, or squalid, This can be seen from the important. To begin with 1971 by the Census of 'a seems reasonable to look in findings of a special survey made in 1970 and these general directions fo r wr;;way, at may It be called the serious problems what it defined as the " low- income areas " of fifty,one of the largest of the cities, 12 A brief listing of some of these findings should dispel any It is clear at the outset that ;IOu ~ problems ~lfectly affect only a notion that an inner,city " poverty area " is occupied only by the rather small minority of the w ~ e ~r an po pulat~on, I ? the relatively " disinherited, new residential suburbs and in t , etter resIdentIal neIghborhoods in Of the almost nine million persons aged sixteen or over who were the outlyin arts of t he centra cItIes and in th eoId er , arger , suburbs, ' counted, half were black and 35 percent non, Spamsh whIte,

about- D

' cities,

the poverty level. t?e overwhelming majority of eo Ie e above arsafely above the poverty More than three, fourths reported incomes lIne , have at least a high sch ~ ~ u~~~on , an~ do not suffer from headed family was $7, 782 (the The median income of a male, racial discrimination. For som~~hi thirds of all city dw ~ll- comparable figure for the United States population as a whole was ers , the urban problems that touc ~ th twdIrectly have to do wIth $10 480).

comfort , convenience ,

amenity d b~~Iness ' an ~m

Among such families, 25 percent of the white and 20 percent of the Negro reported Incomes above $12, 000, called Important; a con, Of the nearly two million persons below the poverty level , whites

b,

probl ems are Im

no logy used here such

advantage, In the termi,

ortant"

? many cases , they cannot even fairl Ye siderable part of the urban l '~n - ~h ose nicer " suburbs

lives unde rpopu a materIa

improve upon,

ut not senous.

and blacks were distributed in about the same proportion as in the whole " poverty area " population, (Spanish families were consider, . ably overrepresented among the poor in the nineteen cities where

who reside in the

condItIOns that will be hard to

The serious problems are to be found' ~ItIes and in most they were numerous enough to be surveyed separately, In alllarg~

small ones, But they affect 0rtsI of n y pa

these cItIes mainly the The median income of male- headed white families was $425 more one an proportIOn of the than that of black and the medIan Income of black $849 more than w ole urban po ulation CrI e IS a partIal exce t' lOn , ut In ChIcago SpanIsh, so the VIOlence Commissio was 0 ) a person who Ives In t e Inner In twenty-one of the fifty,one cItIes, however, the blacks In poverty CIty faces a yearly risk of 1~~ in 0 , eI ~ a ~sau lted wher eas for those areas had higher median family incomes than whites and in twelve less who live in the better areas of e C Ity t e fIsk IS only 1 In 2 000 and more cities the difference (in favor of the whites) was trivialfor those who live in the su ur s only 1 in 000, 10 11 , part from those In the inner districts wh' h ~nse about 10 to 20 percent of The median years of schooling for personstwenty, five years of age for whites the city s total area , ther ~ are f com , ur?a n problems. If what or older was almost identical- 10 and a small fraction really matters is the essential e ~f seno five to thirty, four it ~ and the good and blacks , males and females; for persons twentyhealth of the society, as oppose t areom 0 D?rt Indlvldual , convenIence , amenity, ' was also almost identical and surprisingly high: twelve and a small and business advanta e then e pro em IS less an ur an one than fractIon, an Inner-(big)-city Although a large share of the income of many families went for housing, the reverse was also true: 40 percent of white and 25 percent Although the poor and the' black (and in some cities other minority of Negro (male, headed) families paid less than 10 percent of their groups also) are concentrated in the inner city and although the income for housing, Ninety percent of the white and 80 percent of inner parts of the lar

er

only a small

f b '

" one.

' than 5 percent.

-----

, INTRODUC

12 / THE UNHEA VENL Y CITY REVISITED

the black (male- headed) families had housing that was not

over. of the fact that people live together in huge enclaves

/ 13

rather th

, although about this one crowded that is, there was at least one room per person, relative isolation on farms and in small towns greater when people live in appear Of the nearly nine million persons aged sixteen or over , 478 000' cannot be sure (such problems (9, 6 percent of those in the labor force) were unemployed, Less than enclaves, of course , but this is because they are too conspicuous to be half of these had been laid off; most had either quit or were just en. ignored). The problem that they may present to the good health of the tering the labor force, Only 82 000 had been unemployed for as long society, however, is very different in kind and vastly greater in as six months, Most were teenagers or unattached men and women importance solely by virtue of their living in huge enclaves, Unlike wno in their early twenties, and many of these were students who wanted hose who liv ~ on fann~~d in small towI1 s, disaffected sciousness and sens part- time or summer jobs, a~assed togethe~l11ay develop a co~le~~ive cC?':l desirable that The unemployment rate among male Negro family heads was 5, f identit y, From some standpointsi( may be highly percent; among male white (non- Spanish) family heads it was 4. they do so: feeling the strength of their numbers may give them in other ways percent. confidence and encourage them to act politically and About 10 percent of those

not

in the labor force said that they

intended looking for ajob (most non- participants were housewives , of i course). Asked why they did not look, " inability to find work" was given as a reason by 8 000 males and 24, 000 females, Of these , 25 percent were aged 16-21. Asked what would be their minimum acceptable wage , the median figure given by black males in this age group was $83 weekly; whites expected one dollar more, Both black and white men who were heads Df families expected $ 108,

Within or overlapping, some " poverty areas " are huge enclaves - a few have populations of several hundred thousand that some cities , Puerto Rican or Mexican-American.13 These enclaves they are often called are almost entirely Negro or, in

ghettoes, but as will be explained in Chapter Four this usage is

that will help them, On the other hand, the effect of numbers may be to support attitudes and institutions that will hamper progress, There enclaves represent a thre at to peace is no doubt, however, that such the high proportion of youngpeopTe and order, one made greate;

intIl~s the Commission on population Growth and the American

Future recently remarked The decade 1960 to 1970 saw a doubling of the number of young black men and women aged 15 to 24 in the metropolitan areas of every part of the

nation except the south, This increase, twice that for comparable white youth, was the result of higher black fertility to begin with, participation in away from

World War II baby boom, and continued migration southern rural poverty, The result has been more and more young black people ill-equipped to cope with the demands of urban life, more likely to wind up unemployed or in dead-end, low- paying jobs, and caught in the

the post-

extremely ambiguous constitute a problem that is both serious and unique to the large cities, The problem arises because the enclaves are psychologically and in some degree physically cut off from the rest of the city. Whatever may be the effect of this on the welfare of the individual- and it may possibly be trivial- it is clear that the existence of a large enclave of persons who perceive themselves , and are perceived by others , as having a separate identity, not sharing, or not sharing fully, the attachment that others feel to the " city, " consti-

vicious wheel of poverty, welfare , degradation, and crime. The facts we have cited describe a crisis for our society, They add up to a demographic recipe for more turmoil in our cities, more bitternessamong our " have-nots, " and greater divisiveness among all of our peoples,

what is more important

annihilate the very foundations of America.

tutes a potential hazard net only to present peace and order but

to the well- being of the society over the

long run, Problems of individual welfare may be no greater by virtue

The political danger in the presence of 'great concentrations of people who feel little attachment to the society has long been regarded the one problem that serious problem of the cities the by some The dark ghettoes, " Dr, might eventuate in disaster for the society, " stockpile which can Clark has written, " now represent a nuclear "15 These words bring

to mind the apprehensions that were expressed by

some of the

INTRODUCTION / 15

14 / THE UNHEAVENL Y CITY REVISITED

Founding Fathers and that T ' ocquevl

e set forth in a famous pas" metropolitan area more conveniently, to open up

or the

some areas for

busmess and residential expansIOn, and to bnng a few more customers

emocracyznAmericG'

the suburbs downtown to shop, These are worthy objects when nIted S~ates has, no metropolis, but it already contains several er v .,' from considered by themselves; in context, however, their justification is 1arge The Cltl ~, ~S, PhIladelphia reckoned 161, 000 inhabitants and New Y t(?_ eI.1(;()urage - m effect .to ~f!~(;_ 202, 000, In the year 18 e o wer ranks which inhabit these citie / doubtful , for !helr pnnclpa!_ J:lQQ!.~!~t~vely constitute a rabble eve :~r ~orml~able than the populace of Europea .. su1J~i~iz:~=_ X~r!~~EJll~ve!llent ()!i~~~S!~~,-~er c ity, This, of course, t~~.i!1 towns, They consist of ~r ~~;~ I ~e first ~Iace , who are co ndemne ., ~~ll ~off resident~ (mostly white) fro

0 Th I "

heredltary state of misery an! makes matters worse for the

by the laws and by public OPi

poor by reducmg the number of jobs

degradation, The also conta In a mu tltu e of Euro peans w 0 , ave bee, for them and by makmg neighborhoods, schools, and other commudriven to the shores of the New World b ' elr mIsfortune ~ or the Ir miscon . nity facilities still more segregated, These injuries are only parduct; and they bring to the United State~ :lI our greatest vices without nj lOner-cIty poor to a tIally offset by enablIng a certam number of the f th ose Interests which counteract their bane ful In uence, As InhabItant commute to jobs m the suburbs, country where they have no civil ri hts t hey re rea y to turn all The huge expenditure bemg made for Improvement of mass pas SIons wh' ICh agitate the community to their own advanta us, WIt In 1 bIllIon m scal 1974 - may be Justifiable for the contnt e last few months's enous rIots ave broken out in Philadelphia and N " transit W bution that it will make to comfort , convenience, and business adv an-

of a the 'bl'ftb . l(; h'

e' th

Y k ' ~Isturbances of this kind are unknown in the rest of the count

' m

IC IS not alarmed b , ecause the population hith ert 0 exercise neither power ~or In uence over the

of

the cities has tage. It will not , however, make any contnbutIOn to the solutIon of the

g~d

rural districts, senous problems of the city. Even If every city had a subway as fancy , 00 upon the size of cert aIn mencan cItIes, and espe- as Moscow s, all these problems would remam, concerns cially on the natur elr popu atIOn as a real angerd w Ich threatens the The second great federal urban program future security of the democrati epu lcs ?fthe New World; and I venture ~~wal. Since the creation in 1934 of the Federal Housing Authority to predict that they will erish ~/ IS circumstance unless e govern-th (FHA), the government has subsIdIzed home burldmg on a vast scale ment succeeds In creating an 'limed for ce wlc, wleltremaInsunderth e by msunng mortgages that are wntten on easy terms and, m the case Nevertheless

con ro 0 t e majorIty of the nation

popu atIOn and able to repress its excesses,

'A

e In epen own entof of the t the Veterans AdmmlstratIOn

(V A), by

Most of the mortgages have been for the

guaranteemg mortgages,

purchase of

new

homes,

Strange as it may seem, the mammoth government programs to aid (This was partly because FHA wanted gilt-edged collateral behind the the cities are directed mainly toward the problems of comfort , conve- I mortgages that it insured, but it was also because it shared the nience , amenity, and business advantage, Insofar as they have an American predilection for newness, ) It was cheaper to build on vacant , effect on the serious problems, it is , on the whole , to aggravate them, land , but there was little such land left in the central cities and in their Two programs account for a very large part of federal government larger , older suburbs; therefore, most of the new homes were built in exclude the expenditure for the improvement of the cities (as opposed to the new suburbs, These were almost always zoned so as to " who could afford to maintenance of more or less routine functions), Neither is intended to relatively few Negroes and other " undesirables deal with the serious problems, Both make them worse, build new houses and until late 1962 (when a presidential ordet The improvement of urban transportatio n is one program, The barred discrimination in federally aided housing) FHA acted on its federal contribution for urban highway construction and improve- own to encourage all-white developments by instructing its appraisers ment , which as long ago as 1960 was more than $ 1 billion a year , has to make low ratings of properties in neighborhoods occupied by what since doubled, The main effect of urban expressways , for which most its Underwriting Manual termed " inharmonious racial or nationality of the money is spent , is to enable suburbanites to move about the groups " and by recommending a model racial restrictive covenantP

~~,,:~~,

16 / THE UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED

INTRODUCTION / I7

, the FHA and V A programs have subsidized th income and other grounds), With the important excepti , of New ~oveE1e ~f_t~e.whiterl), IQg.1eCla~~g1rtQf:Tfie cen tra lCTiTei') and old e ' York and the less important ones of some Southern cities, such In effect , then

sU~bs while at the same time penalizing investment in the ~~habili-

of the total supply, More?ve the citie~, The poorest of the poor are usually, for one reason or another, mehglble poor especially the Negro poor have not received any direct for public benefit ~rom t hese programs, (They have , however , received a very Another housing program that has subsidized t~e ~elatively well-off substantial unIntended and indirect benefit, as will be explained later , and hastened their movement out of the central city IS seldom thought beca ~se the departure of the white middle class has made more of as a housing program at all. It consists o f benefits to housmg available to them, ) After the appointment of Robert C. under s Fourth Annual the federal ingQlJJ.~_ta,x la\\is, ,The President Weaver ~s head of , the Housing and Home Finance Agency, FHA , eport on Nati;-;;;i-Housing Goals issued in 1972 estimated that by changed Its re ~ulatlOns to encourage the rehabilitation of existing allow es ing homeowners t2, educt mortgage ~rest afi(!,gr ope houses and neighborhoods, Very few such loans have been made y $4:7 , from their gross incomes federal ~~' are worth j , Bmton' th' e:pLe T9l!sj~ai' 2OThe subsidies, the re ~?rt said, " Urban renewal , has also turned out to be mainly for the advantage re atlveiy ' more to higher income homeowners, Rent~rs were , not of the well-off - mdeed , of the rich and to do the poor more harm benefited at all except as owners might pass some of their tax savmgs than good, The purpose of the federal housing program was declared tat-Jon--ofLhe' :run~dowi1

neighborhoods of these older

housing is not a significant part

housing,

homeo~

however.

by Congress to be " the realization as soon as feasible of the goal of a on to them, To dramatize the inequity of these arrangements, a ta decent home and a suitable living environment for every American' authority testifying before a Senate subcommittee imagined what It family, " In practice , however , the principal objectives of the renewal would sound like if a housing program having the same effects were to be proposed to Congress: P!"ogram have been to ~ttract the middle cla ~s back into the central We have a program to assist people who own homes, , , , If there is a city (as well as to slo ,,":, ItS ex ?du s out of the city) and to stabilize and married couple with more than $200, 000 of income , why for each $100 of restore the central busmess dlstncts, I8 Unfortunately, these objectives

, HUD will pay that couple $70, On the other han~, can be served only at the expense of the poor. Hundreds of thousands mortgage that they have if there is a married couple with an income of $ I 0, 000, then un~er thIS

of low- income people , most of them Negroes or Puerto Ricans , have HUD program we will pay that married couple only $ I 9 on the ~r $ 100 , been ~orced out of low-cost housing, by no means all of it substan- mortgage interest bill. And, of course , if they ,are ,~~o poor to pay an Income dard , In , o :der to m ~ke way for luxury apartments , office buildings tax then we are not gOing to pay them anythIng, hotel , CIVIC centers, Industrial parks , and the like, Insofar as renewal Obviously these various government programs work at cr ~ss has In ~olved the " conservation " or " rehabilitation " of residential ~les to undo) whatan ~ther does (or trying purposes, one undoing (or ~as, Its effect has been to keep the poorest of the poor out of these e~usmg exceptIOns) th to do), Th~ expressway and (with minor ~elghborhoods that is, to keep them in the highest- density slums, program~ in pay iTie middle- class pe~~?~~() leav~_pflie central At a ~ost of more than three billion dollars, " sociologist Scott Greer city'for' renew~ the' sUbtrtbs, Atthe same time , the wrote m 1965, " he Urban Renewal Agency (URA) has succeeded in ' o move ?ack ~~t~, t~s~ilY transit programs-- pay in th~_ ~~ter ~~lIy reducIng the supply of low-cost housing in American , the pr ~sldentIaI programs over the ~ears ~-,--.-fFtt:'derarhousing cIties, 1 report cited above acknowledges, " have contnbu~ed to ~apld, suburThe mJury to , the poor inflicted by renewal has not been offset by , sepbanization and unplanned urban sprawl , ~o growIng residential benefits to the ~ In the form..of public housing (that is, housing owned o~ the poor and mm ~raration of the races, and to the concentratIOn , by pubhc bodies and rented by them to families deemed eligible on "22 In the opinIon of the economist ities in decaying central cities,

~n

a~ss

,"

INTRODUCTION / 19 18 / THE UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED

Richard Muth, expressways (" the major contributor to urban decentralization in the postwar period" ) and federal aids to home ownership\' may have caused the land area of cities to be as much as 17 percent~ larger than it would otherwise be and the central city s share of the urbanized area population to be 3 to 7 percent smaller. In at least one respect , however , these government programs are consistent: they aim at problems of comfort , convenience , amenity, and business advantage , not at ones involving the essential welfare ofl

individuals or the good health of the society, Indeed, on the contrary, they all sacrifice these latter , more important interests for the sake of

they were the " same. " The National Safety Council

, for example

must decide whether cars, highways, and drivers this year are enough like those of past years to justify predicting future experience from past, From a logical standpoint, it is no more possible ,tofordecide this example, question in a purely objective way than it is to decide whether the composition of the urban population is now so different from what it was that nothing can be inferred from the past about the future, Karl and Alma Taeuber are both right and wrong when they write that we do not know enough about immigrant and Negro such assimilation patterns to be able to compare the two and that "to be

likely the former , less important ones, In this the urban programs are no evidence as we could compile indicates that it is more"25 They are misleading than instructive to make such comparisons, programs, Price prodifferent from a great many other government duction programs in agriculture , Theodore Schultz has remarked , take certainly right in saying that one can only guess whether the pattern of up almost all the time of the Department of Agriculture , the agricul- Negro assimilation will resemble that of the immigrant, But they are

tural committees of Congress, and the farm organizations, and wrong to imply that we can avoid making guesses and still compare things that are not known to be alike in all respects except one. (What exhaust the influence of farm people. But these programs, he says comparing immigrant and Negro not improve the schooling of farm children, they do not reduce the after all, would be the point of inequalities in personal distribution of wealth and income , they do not assimilation patterns if we knew that the only difference between the remove the causes of poverty in agriculture , nor do they alleviate it, two was, say, skin color?) They are also wrong in suggesting that the to be instructive. If On the contrary, they worsen the personal distribution of income evidence indicates anything about what is likely , there would be enough there were enough evidence to indicate that within agriculture, "24 to indicate what is likely to happen; indeed, a judgment as to what as to what is likely It is widely supposed that the serious problems of the cities are is likely to be instructive is inseparable from one ' statement expresses to happen. Strictly speaking, the Taeubers unprecedented both in kind and in magnitude. Between 1950 and their 1960 there occurred the greatest population increase in the nation guess as to what the evidence indicates. The facts by no means compel one to take the view that the serious history. At the same time , a considerable part of the white middle class moved to the newer suburbs, and its place in the central cities problems of the cities are unprecedented either in kind or in magniduring the and older suburbs was taken by Negroes (and in New York by Puerto L tude. That the population of metropolitan areas increased 374, 000 persons especially the civil rights 1960 S by nearly I7 percent to a record high of 139, Ricans as well). These and other events need not hold much significance from the present standpoint: Ameriare widely supposed to have changed completely the revolution fantastic rates (consider the can cities have frequently grown at character of " the urban problem. village of 4, 470 in 1840 to a If the present situation is indeed radically different from previous growth of Chicago from a prairie fifty years). In any case, the ones, then we have nothing to go on in judging what is likely to metropolis of more than a million in less rather than happen next. At the very least , we face a crisis of uncertainty. present population increase is leaving most cities S, 130 of the 292 central cities lost more crowded. In the 1960 In a real sense , of course every situation is unique. Even in making 25 million persons; was 2. statistical probability judgments, one must decide on more or less population, and the aggregate of their loss previous decade. Density of this was a greater decline than in the subjective grounds whether it is reasonable to treat certain events as if

':;

, \\..

:\) "

INTRODUCTION / 2

20 / THE UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED

population in the central cities fell from 7, 786 per square mile in roads, transit , hospitals, water supply and sewerage, airports, etc, In the invested by state and 1950 to 4,463 in 1970; the comparable figures for suburban areas are~ twenty- year period, about $200 billion has been 3, 167 and 2 627, 26 Looking to the future , there is every reason to local governments in new public facilities in metropolitan areas, almost the expect the trend toward " decongestion " to continue, But even if it as much as the total investment in new housing in these areas during public

charge that ours is a society of " were to reverse itself, there would be no obvious cause for concern. As period, This hardly supports the"29 squalor amidst private opulence, Irving Hoch , a researcher for Resources for the Future has remarked there has been much sound and fury about the presumed ill effects of At the turn of the century only one child in fifteen went beyond

city size and density on health and welfare but

there is little har

evidence on the subject; moreover , such evidence as points in one dir ectIOn C"ciribe countered by other evidence pointing in the opposite

elementary school; now well over half

finish high school. In this

period blacks have increased the amount of their schooling faster than

whites; in 1900 they averaged three years less than whites , but the . present generation of pupils is expected to get almost as much,

direction.

The movement of farm and rural people (mostly Negroes and or Puerto Ricans) to the large Northern cities was much smaller in the 1960 S than in the previous decade and the outlook is for a continued

decline both because natural increase was less during the 1960 S and " because rural areas appear to be retaining a higher proportion of their growth, 28 But even at its height the migration of Negroes and Puerto Ricans to the big cities was no more than about equal to immigration from Italy in its peak decade, (In New York, Chicago, and many other cities in 1910 , two out of every three schoolchildren were the sons and daughters of immigrants, )

When one takes into account the vastly

of black and other minority-race high school graduates enrolling in college was the same as for whites), As these figures imply, racial discrimination has declined dramatically since the Second War. Studies made over a period of almost thirty years by the National Opinion Research Center reveal a trend " distinctly toward increasing apintegration scores among proval of integration " with the highest prothe young and among residents of the largest metropolitan areas,

greater size and wealth of the cities now as compared to half a century

The very movements that in some cities or parts of cities signalize , to make or constitute , an improvement in the situation tend, of course

or more ago ,

matters worse in other

it is obvious that by the only relevant measure

namely, the number of immigrants relative to the capacity

of the

cities to provide for them and to absorb them the movement from the South and from Puerto Rico has been not large but small.

-

if comparison is made among pupils with about the same test slightly more, 30 (In 1972 , for the first time , the percentage scores

In many important respects the material conditions of life in the cities have long been improving. Incomes have increased steadily, In the 1960 , for example , white income rose by 69 percent and black

Q.-" income by I 00

places, For example, in Philadelphia the

population of the districts designated " low income " by the Census than 900, 000 to nearly 800, 000 in the 1960 more dropped from This happened partly because many families, black as well as white became able to afford to move to better neighborhoods, The conse, was quence of their moving out of the " low- income " areas, however to widen the income gap between those areas and the rest of the city, " areas has been inIn other words , the poverty of the " low- income it may

conceivably percent, Despite this relative gain, the income of black tensified relative to other areas even though , families was still somewhat less than two- thirds that of whites, Hous- f be that no one in any of them is poorer than before, (As a practic)l," ') ing is also better and consumption of it more than doubled in real per cal matter , there can be little doubt that the departure of the bettercapita terms between 1950 and 1970, As Dean Dick Netzer has off families does entail disadvantages for those who remain, :)~' written Surpdsing as it may seem, most Americans are reasonably well Not only has the housing improved, but also there have been huge satisfied with their neighborhoods, A recent poll found that those who live in rural areas and in small towns are more likely to say that they investments in supporting public and institutional facilities - schools jo

...0'"

.'

':\

22

THE UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED

INTRODUCTION

are satisfied than those who live in cities , and, as one would expect, the tests itself in unexplainable questionings and searches, in hostile and insowell-off are more likely to be satisfied than the poor. But even among lent attitudes toward groups of young Negroes on the street, or in cars, and blacks (seven out of ten of whom are city dwellers) only 17 percent in the use of disrespectful and sometimes racist language, , . , say that they are dissatisfied with their neighborhoods. Following Kristol , one can say that if the " police brutality line " is If the situation is improving, why, it may be asked , is there so much defined as that which places one- fifth of all police behavior below it, talk of an urban crisis? The answer is that the improvements in then one- fifth of all police behavior will always be brutal. The school dropout problem is an even more striking example. At performance , great as they have been, have not kept pace with rising the turn of the century, when almost everyone was a dropout expec;t!!ti...ons. In other words, although things have been getting better term and the " problem " did not exist. It was not until the 1960 abSolutely, they have been getting worse relative to what we think they

, the

S, ,

should be,

And this is because , as a people , we seem to act on the

advice of the old jingle: Good , better, best Never let it rest Until your good is better And your better best.

when for the first time a majority of boys and girls were graduating ~A"

from high school and practically all had at least some high school training, that the " dropout problem " became acute. Then, although \ : the dropout rate was still declining, various cities developed at least C\ fifty-five separate programs to deal with the problem. Hundreds of

articles on it were published in professional journals , the National

Education Association established a special action project to deal with it , and the Commissioner of Education , the Secretary of Labor 35 . pointed out that for nearly a century all studies , in all countries , have t and the President all made public statements on it. Obviously, if one " as that which schooling line concluded that a third, a fourth , or a fifth of the nation in question is defines the " inadequate amount of fifth of all boys , then one\..below the poverty line. 33 " Obviously, " he remarks, " if one defines the, places one-fifth of all boys and girls below it poverty line as that which places one-fifth of the nation below it, then and girls will always be receiving an inadequate amount of sChooling. Whatever our educational standards are today, Wayland writes, one- fifth of the nation will always be below the poverty line, " The point is that even if everyone is better off there will be as much pov- they will be higher tomorrow. He summarizes the received doctrine in erty as ever , provided that the line is redefined upward. Kristol notes these words: that whereas in the depths of the Depression, F.D, R. found only oneStart the child in school earlier; keep him in school more and more third of the nation " ill- housed, ill- clad , ill-nourished " Leon Keyser- months of the year; retain all who start to school for twelve to fourteen ling, a former head of the Council of Economic Advisers, in 1962 years; expect him to learn more and more during this period, in wider and published a book called Poverty and Deprivation in the u.S. wider areas of human experience, under the guidance of a teacher, who has the Plight of Two- Fifths of a Nation, had more and more training, and who is assisted by more and more speMuch the same thing has happened with respect to most urban cialists, who provide an ever-expanding range of services, with access to problems. Police brutality, for example , would be a rather minor more and more detailed personal records , based on more and more carefully validated tests, problem if we judged it by a fixed standard; it is a growing problem because we judge it by an ever more exacting standard, A generation To a large extent, then, our urban problems are like the mechanical ago the term meant hitting, $omeone on the head with a nightstick. rabbit at the racetrack, which is set to keep just ahead of the dogs no Now it often means something quite different: matter how fast they may run. Our performance is better and better, Consider the poverty problem , for example. Irving Kristol has

What the Negro community is presently complaining about when it cries police brutality " is the more subtle attack on personal dignity that mani-

but because we set our standards and expectations to keep ahead of performance , the problems are never any nearer to solution. Indeed,

,,

24

THE UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED

if standards and expectations rise

faster

than performance, the prob-

lems may get (relatively) worse as they get (absolutely) better. Some may say that since almost everything about the city can stand improvement (to put it mildly), this mechanical rabbit effect is a good thing in that it spurs us on to make constant progress, No doubt this is true to some extent. On the other hand, there is danger that we may

CHAPTER TWO

mistake failure to progress as fast as we would like for failure to Logic of

Metropolitan Growth

measures that " that results , an " urban crisis will only make matters worse, After all

The

treat it as if it were might be a very serious mistake.

trolley, the bicycle, and the telephone, It is impossible to foresee at present just what their influence is to be on the question of

progress at all and, in panic, rush into ill-considered

, , , within a very recent period three new factors have been

largely from rising standards and expectations is not the sort of crisis suddenly developed which promise to exert a powerful that , unless something drastic is done , is bound to lead to disaster, TO' influence on the problems of city and country life, These are the This danger is greatest in matters where our stan dards are unreasonbly high, The effe ct of too- high standards cannoCbe to spur us on to each epre sc:J.iQ~dJ~y~I9CpirfQfmance SQQner than Wf~ o therwise wo\.tkLwh~IJJhalJeveljs impossible of attainment. At the same time wastefu these standards may cause us to adopt measures that are conclude from the inevitab loDE; run, to urious and inj !lIl~' in the failure of these measures that there is something fundamentally ong with lefidthe range of present Department of Health , Education

the distribution of population; but this much is certain, that it adds from five to fifteen miles to the radius of every large town, It is by such apparently unimportant, trifling, and inconspicuous forces that civilization is swayed and moulded in its evolutions and no man can foresee them or say whither they lead"

j, Kingsbury, 1895

our society,

and Welfare services equitably additional would require an need

to all those similarly situated in

UCH of what has happened

as well as of what is happen-

entire federal budget Elliot L. Richardson reported as he left the secretaryship of that department.37 His point was that expectations, indeed claims authorized by Congress, far exceeded the capacity of the government to provide, " One can imagine " he said somberly, " point ofreckoning at which the magnitude of the ill- treated problems is fully perceived along with a profound sense of failure, And one

in the typical city or metropolitan area can be undering de.nLQgraphic: if the stood in terms of three imperatives, ! The first is population of a city increases, the city must expand in one direction or up, down, or from the center outward. The second is another tec hnological: if it is feasible to transport large numbers of people outward (by train, bus , and automobile) but not upward or downward (by elevator), the city must expand outward. The third is ~c.onomic: if

can only hope that the troubled reaction toward the institutions held

the distribution of wealth and income is such that some can afford

accountable would be reasoned and responsible,

new housing and the time and money to commute considerable dis-

cost roughly equivalent to the.

of the tances to work while others cannot , the expanding periphery well-off' ) while the city must be occupied by the first group (the " older, inner parts of the city, where most of the jobs for the unskilled not well-off' are , must be occupied by the second group (the " " is used to emphasize the inexorable , conThe word " imperatives comprise the straining character of the three factors that together

:-'p()~

26 / THE UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED

THE LOGIC OF METROPOLITAN GROWTH

logic of metropolitan growth, Indeed , the principal purpose of this forces that were shaping New York. These were, as the committee chapter is to show that , given a rate of population growth , a transpor- made clear, the same forces that had always been shaping it. And they tation technology, and a distribution of income , certain consequences were the same ones that are shaping it and other cities still: must inevitably follow; that the city and its hinterland must develop , and encompassed As our wharves became crowded with warehouses accordjJ!gu a predictable pattern and that even an all-wise and Knickeral!

!~ul governme~~ ~?~!?, not c~~Ilge this pattern except by first

anging iliecoriditions that give rise to it. The argument is not that nothing can be done to improve matters, Rather , it is that only those things can be done which lie within the boundaries rather narrow ones, to be sure fixed by the logic of the growth process, Nor is it argued that the only factors influencing metropolitan development are those that relate to population, technology, and income, Countless others also influence it. Two of these other factors are of key importance , even though they are not part of the logic of the process, They will be discussed in the following two chapters (on class culture and race), This chapter , highly schematic, describes in a generalized way how most American cities , small as well as large , have developed and are still developing, but it does not describe completely (or perhaps even

city has developed. The city under discussion here is a highly simplified model. Its residents have no class, ethnic, or racial attributes (they will acquire them in the next accurately) how any

particular

two chapters), They are neither rich nor poor; instead, they are

well-off' or " not well-off " depending upon whether or not they can afford to buy new homes and to commute a considerable distance requiring, say, half an hour or more to work. If the reader finds himself

perplexed and irked at an account of

metropolitan growth that deals only with demographic, technological and economic factors , ignoring such others of obvious importance as racial discrimination , he is asked to be patient. This simplification is for analytical purposes, and the necessary complications but only the necessary ones will be introduced later on, The method is to start with the simplest possible model of urban growth and then (in the next two chapters) to elaborate on it.

The logic of metropolitan growth began unfolding the moment the cities were founded and it hasilOt changed since, More than a century ago, in 1857, a select committee of the state legislature described the

with bustle and noise , the wealthier citizens, who peopled old " bocker " mansions ,

near the bay, transferred

their residence to

streets

beyond the din; compensating for remoteness from their counting houses, by the advantages of increased quiet and luxury, Their habitations then passed into the hands, on the one side, of boarding house keepers, on the other, of real estate agents; and here, in its beginning, the tenant house became a real blessing to that class of industrious poor whose small earnings limited their expenses and whose employment in workshops, stores, residence of and about the wharves and thoroughfares, rendered a near , and a mechanic

much importance, At this period, rents were moderate commodious with family could hire two or more comfortable and even apartments , in a house once occupied by wealthy people, for less than half what he is now obliged to pay for narrow and unhealthy quarters, This state

oftenantry comfort did not , however, continue long; for the rapid march of improvement speedily enhanced the value of property in the lower wards of

the city, and as this took place, rents rose

, and accommodations decreased

submitted to

in the same proportion, At first the better class, at of the tenants onerous rates, but retain their single floors, or two and three rooms

this rendered them poorer, and those who were able to do so, followed the

example of former proprietors, and emigrated to the upper wards, The spacious dwelling houses then fell before improvements, or languished for a season, as tenant houses of the type which is now the prevailing evil of our city; that is to say, their large rooms were partitioned into several smaller ones (without regard to proper light or ventilation), street; the rates of they rent being and soon

lower in proportion to space or height from the

became filled, from cellar to garret , with a class of tenantry living from hand to mouth, loose in morals, improvident in habits, degraded or squalid as beggary itself.2

What was happening in New York (and elsewhere as well) was growth atthe its

expansion of the city outward under the pressure of

center. Typically, land closest to the point of original settlement

(always the point most

accessible to waterborne transportation)

became the site of the central business district. Great accessibility to wharves, markets, shops, and offices, and later to railheads, meant

28 / THE UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED

THE LOGIC OF METROPOLITAN GROWTH

that commercial and industrial activities had to be located there; the' for more than ten miles from the city center was out of the question, closer a site was to the most accessible center, the more it tended to be In the early 1850 S a horsecar on rails appeared in New York. It worth, Accordingly, most people lived on the outskirts of the central cost less to operate and made more frequent stops. Until the end of single routes which, if business district , where land prices were not prohibitively high, Only the Civil War most of the larger cities had , reached the very rich, to whom the price of land did not matter , and the very they ran more than a half mile beyond the built-up areacompany. transportation poor, who occupied undesirable sites near factories and wharves and real estate developments owned by the endured great overcrowding, lived in the very center of the city, The more prosperous members of the middle terraced class nowbrownstone tended to As the central business district grew , it absorbed the residential live in town houses arranged in rows: the period, After the neighborhoods adjacent to it, The people who lived in them were rowS of the large eastern cities date from this , and during the pushed outward into unsettled or sparsely settled districts where land Civil War horsecar routes were extended somewhat of the lines prices were still low, To say that they were " pushed" makes it sound 1870 S and 1880 S, when deflation reduced costs, many - a journey of go, " as if they went against their wills, Probably most were glad to were built out to about four miles from the city center Those who owned their homes profited from the rise in prices; they half to three- quarters of an hour. According to David Ward (whose could sell an old house close to the business district for enough with account has been paraphrased in most of the foregoing), many of the which to build a new and bigger one at the periphery ofthe city, extensions were initially designed to serve outlying hospitals, cemeMuch ofthe housing taken over in this way was torn down to make teries, and parks, The weekend and holiday use of these lines susroom for factories , stores, and offices, Some , however, was converted tained them until adjacent residential developments supported comfamily dwellings were now to more intensive residential use, When the only transportation was muter services, Although separate singlethe dominant form of suburban housing, most new construction was by horse , almost everyone lived within walking distance of his job in the central business district, Even afterward, when one could take a I' confined to discontinuous ribbon development.4 that is, not far from the trolley to work , factory workers and office and store clerks generally Where land costs were relatively high consisted the housing near the horsecar routes often preferred to pay relatively high rents for crowded quarters from which city center " (upper-story porches decking the front and they could walk to work rather than spend the time and money to largely of " three- deckers commute from neighborhoods where rents were lower. The central rear of four-story tenements), Soon , however, it became feasible to business district was therefore ringed with rooming houses and tenebuild farther out. The first elevated steam railroads were built in New ments, These establishments could afford the expensive land because York in the 1870 S, and twenty years later every sizable city had an 5 Railroads and trolleys enabled more people they used it intensively, At the end of the last century, for example electric trolley system, some lodging houses in Chicago accommodated (if that is the word) to commute and to commute larger distances; the farther out they as many as a thousand lodgers a night. went , the cheaper the land was and the larger the lot sizes they could As the populations and income of the city grew , so did the number afford, One- and two- family houses became common, Wherever this outward movement of the well-off passed beyond the and proportion of those (the " well-off' ) who could afford new homes, legal boundaries of the city, it created special problems, As early as In the nature of the case , most new homes had to be built at the 1823, Cincinnati officials complained that people living on the edge of periphery of the expanding city, where there was vacant land, In the 1830 S the large cities- New York, Boston , and Philadelphiathe town did not contribute their fair share of taxes, and a few years saw the introduction of omnibuses which were usually drawn by later the council of St. Louis, which had the same problem, petitioned two horses and carried twelve to fifteen passengers at a fixed fare the state legislature to enlarge the city to include the settlers just over a fixed route, Because of high fares and low speeds commuting beyond its borders who had " all the benifits (sic) of a City residence

-----

without any of its burdens, "6 Many cities were enlarged , thus postthe emergence of an acute poning in some instances indefinitely problem of city-suburb relations, The motives that impelled people to , move outward were essentially the same , however , whether the boundaries of the city were near in or far out, and the strength of the \ outward movement seems to have been roughly the same in every era \ and in

every place, The " flight to the suburbs " is certainly nothing

\ new,

The movement of the well-off out of the inner city was always

ts.

3I

THE LOGIC OF METROPOLITAN GROWTH

30 / THE UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED

()J~go the advantage of much

only !!:!e very rich could ~ford~ chea'per la!1

?Il_

~ outsKir

not well-off' (meaning here

As the well-off moveaoutward, the " or the time and money to those who could' not afford new houses

travel half an hour to work) moved into the relatively old and highdensity housing left behind, Indeed, it was in part the pressure of their

demand for this housing that caused the well-off to move as soon as they did. The result in many places was to thin out the most over-

crowded districts (" rabbit-warrens,

" the reformers of the 1880

regarded (as it had been by the select committee in New York) as both

called them) adjacent to warehouses, factories, stores, and offices,

portent and cause of the city s decline. The well-off were sure that without their steadying and elevating influence the city would drift

Had the supply of the not well-off not been continually replenished by migration from abroad and from the small towns and farms of this country, the high- density tenement districts would have emptied rap-

from bad to worse and become " the prey of professional thieves ruffians , and political jugglers. "8 As a committee of leading Bos-

tonians explained in the 1840 An individual's influence is exerted chiefly in the place where he resides, Take away from the city a hundred moral and religious families, and there

incomes rose and more people

idly at the end of the last century as moved outward, As it happened, however, immigration continually until they, too, brought new workers who, for at least a few years were glad to take refuge in the housing that the could move on

will be taken away a hundred centers of moral and religious influence though the constituted heads of those families spend the greatest part of

others had left behind,

their time in the city, and hold in the metropolis the greatest proportion of their property, Those who remove their residence from the city, remove also their places of attendance on public worship, and the children of those families are removed from our primary and higher schools, public and private, , . , They are not here to visit the poor and degraded, and by their example and conduct to assist in resisting the tide of iniquity that is rolling

decentralizing effect of the commuter railroad and the trolley and of the expansion of commercial and industrial land uses near the city center. In many cities the densest slums were either displaced by

in on US,

People said that they moved because the city was no longer habitable: they could not stand its dirt , noise , and disorder , not to mention the danger to property values from the arrival of " undesirable people, (" The settlement of an Irish family in one of our suburban neighborhoods, " William Dean Howells wrote in 1888 , strikes a mortal pang " in the old residents, whose property values " tremble, "lO) Actually, they would have moved anyway, although not in all

cases quite so soon, even if the inner city had been as clean and fresh as a field of daisies, They would have moved sooner or later because as the city grew, the land they occupied would have to be used more mo~e~~~~~ll~e intensively, Or , to put it another way, they wo!!!d

Heavy as it was, migration to the city seldom fully

offset the

reasonable densities by

stores, offices, and factories or drained to improvement of transportation, or both, The Basin tenementbetween area of Cincinnati , for example, lost one-fourth of its population 1910 and 1930, a period of rapid growth for the rest of the city, In Chicago, New York, and Philadelphia much the same hapfive thing metropoli-

12

pened,u One- quarter of the population of the twentyIO lived in suburban

tan districts defined by the Census Bureau in 19 zones rather than in central cities. In the first half of the twentieth century the process of growth was , accelerated by changes of technology, although its character was not changed in any essential way, Invention of the mechanical refrigerainexpensive canned tor, along with a vast increase in the variety of foods, reduced the number of boardinghouses and restaurants, Disduty power persal of factories was brought about by the use of heavytransmission cables and, even more, of the assembly line (horizontal

32

THE UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED

processes required more land). Probably of equal importance was the introduction of cheap and rapid highway transportation, 13 By 19 15

nearly 2, 5 million automobiles were in use; five years later there were I. I million trucks. The automobiles facilitated the creation

of residential neighborhoods still farther out from the central business district , and the trucks cut factories loose from railheads (and thus from the center of the city also). Stupendous sums were spent for automobiles and for highways, in effect subsidizing the development of the hinterland, The federal government gave outward expansion a further push when during the Depression it created the Federal Housing Administration. As was noted in the previous chapter , FHA' s assistance (and later the Veterans Administration s as well) went mostly to those who bought new homes, For the most part these were in outlying neighborhoods of the central city or in the suburban ring, the only places where vacant land was plentiful. Had it been disposed to do so , FHA might

have stimulated the renovation of existing housing and thus the refurbishing of the central cities, If it had done this, it would have

assisted many of the not well-off, a category that included most

Negroes as well as other minority group members. In fact , it did the opposite: it subsidized the well-off who wanted to leave the central city, while (by setting neighborhood and property standards that they

could not meet) refusing to help the not well-off to renovate their

central-city houses.

The Depression slowed down but

thanks to the FHA stop the outward movement of the well-off. It did , however

did not , interrupt and even reverse the flow into the city of the not well-off. In the 1920 S more than four million immigrants had come from abroad , the great majority of them settling in the larger cities, There also had been a considerable movement of Negroes from the rural South to the large cities of the North , especially New York, (The Negro population of New York more than doubled in this decade , rising from 152,467 to 327, 706 , and Harlem , which had only recently been occupied by outward- bound , second- generation Jews and Italians, was suddenly transformed. !5) When the Depression struck , people not only stopped coming to the city but left it iff" large numbers to go " back to the land" and back to the old country. Now , partially drained and no longer

THE LOGIC OF METROPOLITAN GROWTH

being replenished, the inner city began to stagnate. Neighborhoods that had been packed a few years before were more or less depopulated; people who lived in them no longer expected to follow the seemed to have been left tenement trail" out of the city, They permanently behind and it appeared to some people that a new and

serious problem had arisen. As Edith Elmer Wood explained in a bulletin written for the Public Works Administration in 1935: The blighting effect of slums on human lives and human character was less acute during the period of immigration and rapid population growth than it is now, Newcomers sought the cheapest and therefore the worst , the housing, literally pushing out , and necessarily into something better last previous immigrant wave, They were able to afford the move because rapidly expanding population meant rapidly expanding jobs, , , , Living in the slums was a temporary discomfort , cheerfully endured, because of an animating faith that prosperity and comfort were just ahead, , , , changed, The situation has Since immigration stopped , all that has , but it is the become static, A superior family climbs out here and there exception, not the rule , and for everyone that goes up, another must come down, Discouragement or bitterness has taken the place of hope, It is only recently that we have seen a generation reach manhood and womanhood which was born and bred in our city slums, which has known no home but a dingy tenement , no playground but the city streets, And worst of all, it has little hope of attaining anything better except by the short-cuts of crime, The " defense boom " and then World War II quickly filled the inner city to overflowing once again. Now the well-off could not move away

because of controls on residential construction; at the same time, large numbers of workers, most of them unskilled, came from small towns and farms until all the inner city housing that could possibly be used was occupied. A huge amount of new factory capacity was built in two

or three years, most of it at the periphery of the city but within its borders, Had this expansion taken place under normal circumstances, most of the new factories would have been located in the suburban ring, beyond the borders of the city. The effect of the war, therefore was to slow down somewhat the decentralization of the city. As soan as wartime controls were lifted, the logic of growth reaswell-off, serted itself, A huge pent-up demand on the part of the families, swelled by formation of new whose numbers had been

THE LOGIC OF METROPOLITAN GROWTH

34 / THE UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED

wartime prosperity, and the home- loan provisions of the " !. Bill of Rights " burst forth in a mass exodus from the city to the suburbs: between 1940 and 1950 some 2, 3 million persons moved out of the

better war prosperity, The not well-off very quickly occupied the , the least well-off had housing that came on the market. In the past density districts, Now they spread out in all lived in compact, high-

suburbs , of course , and 2, 3 million was only 12 percent of the total population of these cities; nevertheless, the sudden outward surge was unprecedented in scale, As had happened before , when the well-off

more than half a million (nearly 20 percent) and there were even

twelve largest central cities, Not all of these people went to the

left, the not well-off moved into the housing left behind, The more prosperous among them took the best of it and left the housing that they vacated for those below them on the income ladder , who in turn passed their housing down to still others, Many of those in this housing queue practically all those at the " far " end of it were Negroes (in New York, Puerto Ricans also; in Los Angeles, Oakland and some other cities , Mexicans also),17 The heavy, continued Negro migration to the city during and after the war changed the situation markedly. In 1940 more than threequarters (77 percent) of the nation s Negroes lived in the South; by 1970 only a little more than half (53 percent) lived there, Whereas until recently the Negro was rural , now he was big-city: 58 percent of Negroes , as compared to 28 percent of whites , lived in central cities in 1970. The net out-migration of Negroes from the South slowed in the 1960 , but migration and natural increase together gave them by 1970 a little more than 20 percent of the total central city population and nearly 30 percent of the population of the dozen largest cities,!8 Great as it was , the postwar movement into the larger , older central cities did not anywhere equal the movement out of them, This in itself tended to make housing more plentiful. The growing demand for low-cost housing also brought about an increase in the supply of it as

the well-off found it advantageous to sell and move to the suburbs leaving their houses to be converted for occupancy by two or three families of the not well-off and , in the case of those who were landlords, spending less than before on maintenance and improvements, 19 Much of the housing that came to the not well-off in this way

was of good quality, built only thirty or forty years before and still structurally sound, All that was wrong with much of it was that it was out-of- date , aesthetically and otherwise , by the standards of the well-off standards that had risen rapidly during the war and post-

, covering miles directions, leapfrogging neighborhoods here and there and miles. 2O In the 1960 S these movements were still strong: in that decade the white (read well-off) population of Chicago declined by larger percentage declines in Detroit (30

percent), St, Louis (3 I

. percent), and Newark (37 percent), As was remarked in the previous " of the

chapter , in 1970 relatively few families in the " poverty areas large cities lived in crowded housing and many spent only a small part of their income on housing, By no means all of the well-off left the city, Some who could afford any rent lived in luxury apartments , a gold coast along the central

business district, The number of such people was bound to grow, but not enough to change the inner city fundamentally, In the outlying

neighborhoods, heads of families often remained even when they could afford to move; people getting along in years saw no point in moving from neighborhoods in which they had lived so long and to

which they had become attached, It was their

children and their

boarders who moved away to the suburbs, On the lower East Side of S there were still some neighNew York in the 1960 S and early 1970 borhoods occupied mainly by remnants of the Jewish immigration ofthe 1920 ofthe early 1900 S and the Puerto Rican immigration but the population of such neighborhoods

was thinning out, The

later migrants, mostly Negroes (and in New York, Puerto Ricans), had in most cases come to the city as young adults or children and were a remarkably fast- growing and fast-spreading population. Looking at the neighborhoods they had left a decade or two before, saw.,.- lawns and suburbanites were often dismayed at what they shrubbery trampled out ,

houses unpainted, porches sagging, vacant

and, of course lots filled with broken bottles and junk, To them " who for one reason or even more to the scattering of " old residents decay, these things constituted " blight" and " another remained ' the white middle class was To many commentators it appeared that blight" and also from neighbors whom they running away " from " considered inferior or of whom they were afraid (although exaggera-

----.-.-

,"

- -

THE LOGIC OF METROPOLITAN GROWTH /

36 / THE UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED

tion was frequent , amount

of

there was no doubt that in many districts the

street crime increased dramatically as the composition

the population changed), Allowing for exceptions , however , the.

the middle class to the suburbs was not properly speaking flight at all, Most of those who left did so neither from fear of violence or of blight but simply because they wanted and could afford newer and more spacious houses and neighborhoods, In his study of Levitflight"

--.. ...-

;~'"

of

URBAN HOUSING NEEDS IN THE UNITED STATES AS REPRESENTED BY SUBSTANDARD AND STANDARD OVERCROWDED UNITS UNDER THREE DIFFERING ASSUMPTIONS Millions or Units

town, the huge new suburb that was built in New Jersey, Herbert

those interviewed volunteered the or community as their most important reason for leaving it. The desire to own a spacious , freeinadequacy

of

20.

of

Gans found that only 9 percent

their old neighborhood

standing house was the most frequent and important motivation, To the people who moved from old tenements and shanties into the

housing that had been vacated by the relatively well-off people who moved to the suburbs, what was happening to the central city neighof them cared little borhoods did not appear as " decay, "23 Many to broken bottles; they knew that the more " fixed up " things were , the higher rents would be,

" nothing for lawns and had no objections . too ,

or

What mattered most to them was having four

-."I H,

five rooms instead

two, plumbing that worked, an inside bathroom that did not have to be shared with strangers down the hall , and central heating, To the least well-off blight" was a , They were able , for the first time in their lives , to occupy housing that was comfortable,

one

or

ble~

of

Although the appearance

5 ~.

neighborhoods declined as they were

occupied by lower- income groups, the quality housing in the of central city as a whole improved dramatically, Housing was repaired

1950 1-

and improved on a wholesale scale during the postwar years, some of

it by government programs but more cesses

of

it through the normal pro-

accompanied by a decline

of

about one- third

in the amount

of

sub-

-;i;;;-

1960

~911

Existing programs. ramily rornlation. economic growth , etc" continue . prescnt rates,

consumer spending, Although differences in Census defini-

tion make precise comparisons impossible , more than half the housing in metropolitan areas that was substandard in 1949 was put in sound condition during the next ten years through structural repairs or by plumbing additions, At the end of the decade , some families still lived in housing that was appallingly bad , but their number was small and getting smaller. As incom ~s rose , so did the quality of housing, (Muth estimated that a 10 percent increase in average income is

-. L~ 4.

If government assistance programs were discontinued, If 500, 000 low- and moderate- income units wcrc huilt annually under assisted programs for families with incomcs ofS5. 000 or less. over a 10ycar period,

Sol/rce: Frank S. Kristof. ProJection,

Urban Hol/sing

Rcport prcparcd for thc N

Needs Throl/gh the 191/(/5:an

Anolysis and

ationa) Commission on Urhan Prohlcms,

Rcscarch Rcport No, ) 0 (Washington , D, C: US, (jovcrnmcn t Printing Ol1iec. 1968), 1',

58,

,"

38 / THE UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED standard housing, 25)

THE LOGIC OF METROPOLITAN GROWTH

There was reason to believe that

if government

programs and other factors operating in 1968 were to continue (and., in mid- 1973 they were continuing) the number of urban housing units which were either substandard or overcrowded would be less than 5 million by 1980, Data of the sort presented in the preceding paragraph and the chart must be viewed with a certain skepticism , however. For one thing,

Census data on the quality of housing an; hastily gathered by per-

sons without much training and are therefore not very reliable, 26 For another , if as is happening in the inner districts of many large cities the quality of a neighborhood is going from bad to worse it is misleading to report , albeit correctly, that there is less substandard or overcrowded housing there. As Frank S, Kristof, the authority whose estimates are shown in the chart , has written If a neighborhood is no longer regarded as a good place to live , the condition and quality of its housing become almost irrelevant to its survival."27 In New York Newark, Philadelphia , Detroit , and many other cities some neighborhoods are being abandoned at a time when

housing, looked at

house- by- house and without regard to social conditions and attitudes would lead one to conclude that there is no " housing problem " in the

tracts where abandonment is occurring,

By discarding housing that was still usable , the well-off conferred a great benefit upon the not well-off, Like many benefits, however , this one had hidden costs: in order to use the discarded housing, "ne hag. t~_ ye wheLe it wa.s..;.-,ilUQQ..Qft~'!Jhis meant living where there were

n9t e!l()ughjo!?s,

The central business district and with it the central city as a had long been losing its monopoly of accessibility, As the

whole

population at the periphery of the city grew , there was increasing

support for

large stores and other facilities that could

compete

with those of the central business district, People no longer had to go downtown for almost everything. At the same time , improvements in transportation , especially the building of expressways and of major airports that were some distance from the city, made it easier than

before to get from one part of the metropolitan

area to another

without going downtown, Also , manufacturing always tended to move

outward to cheaper land; beginning in the early 1930 , increases in

plant size and improvements in materials- handling techniques hastened this movement. More and more manufacturers wanted single-

story plants with horizontal material flows and aisles wide enough to permit mechanical handling of materials. This usually compelled them to move their operations to a less congested area close to a 29 After the Second World War center of long- distance truck hauling. much manufacturing, and much retailing and wholesaling as well, moved out of the city, The central business district retained its advantage of accessibility freQuent face- to-face comm!lnica-

with respect to activities involving

!Lon, Top executives had to be near to each other and to the bankers,

lawyers, advertisirlg men,)overnment officials, and others with whom they dealt frequently; ' consequently, they kept their headquarters

factories as well as ! downtown, The rest of their operations they could send to the suburbs, where land was l record- keeping cheaper and clerical help easier to find, or to other areas altogether. In the 1950 S the central cities stagnated economically, and it appeared likely that they would decline drastically in the 1960 S, In fact, although most lost population and suffered some deterioration of public facilities, the economies of the large central cities grew although at a slower rate than those of the suburban fringes. Between 1960 and 1968, the 30 largest central cities more than made up what

they lost in manufacturing and trade by gains in insurance , communications, tourism, and services, especially governmental services; in those years the value of their production (in constant dollars) increased by one- third. Employment in most large central cities

3D

increased in the 1960 S even though population decreased and the quality of city services declined.

The rapid growth of the service sector in the central cities has not meant jobs for all , however, Most of the new service jobs are held by relatively well- trained suburbanites rather than by the low-skilled central city residents whose factory jobs have moved to the suburbs, Oakland, Calif" is apparently a fairly typical example. According to Pressman and Wildavsky, the East Bay economy is flourishing and, although the suburbs are growing faster , Central Oakland is becoming a service center. There are plenty of jobs in the city for the welltrained, most of them middle- class white suburbanites who can con-

40

;

\;

~~~

(, "

THE LOGIC OF METROPOLITAN GROWTH

THE UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED

' nonveniently commute, For the low-skilled black workers who live in the about the potential effectiveness of policies for ' suburbanizing inner city the case is entirely different. They cannot follow their whites in the urban ghetto, The known costs of such policies would be

~~\

f\

factory jobs to the suburbs and for lack of training and because

very great, and the expected benefits very small, at least in terms of

good jobs in the new service economy. Oakland, " the City Planning Department is quoted as saying, " increasingly providing a home for blacks and a place of employment whites, "31 for It should not be supposed that most central city workers have been left stranded by these developments, however. Th ere ~re still mC?re

employment opportunity,

i discrimination they do not get

"34

the logic of At some future time - a very distant one perhaps metropolitan growth will have to change, Conceivably, the urban population may stop growing, or technology may change so as to make it cheaper to build upward than outward, or government may for the unskilled in the central cities than e ~re ii1. the redistribute income to such an extent that everyone can afford to buy jQps r()-EQl!~~.. areas , and , except in three or four of the largest metroa new house and to commute a considerable distance to work, If none politan areas , a worker can travel from his inner city dwelling to ajob of these changes occurs, the supply of vacant land into which the anywhere on the outer perimeter of the metropolitan area in no more metropolis can expand will run out, None of these changes seems than half an hour. The radial pattern of highway and rail transporta- likely to occur in the foreseeable future, however, Essentially the tion , although not planned for the purpose, is ideal from the stand- same logic that shaped the growth of the city in the past may therefore point of workers , such as domestics and construction workers , who t be expected to shape that of the metropolitan area in the future, It is typically are employed for a few days in one suburb and then a few in in fact , already clear that the urban population will grow: the children another, the second perhaps being on the opposite side of the metroof the postwar baby boom are already reaching adulthood, and a new second- generation " baby boom is in the making, Migration from the R~~~_ ~comm1Jting that is, traveling politan area from the first. " from an inner city residence to a job in the suburbs was done by rural South will continue to decline and many migrants will avoid nearly 1, 500 000 workers in 1970, cities like Newark, which are known to be dead ends, in favor of ones ion, however

The increase

suitable for the

number of new jobs especially of ones has been much greater in the suburbs unskilled in the

than in the central cities, Some economists think that this constitutes a

very serious handicap for the poor and the black who, because of discrimination in the housing market and the absence in the suburbs of an adequate supply of low-cost housing, are obliged to live in the inner parts of the central cities, Nothing would contribute more to the .. welfare of these people , in the opinion of these economists, than the creation of a supply of housing enabling them to live where job opportunities are growing, 32 Other economists disagree , however, One found from a study of sixty- five large metropolitan areas no support for the view that the " suburbanization of jobs " significantly affected , the employment of blacks, 33 Another found that although whites gained from living in or near central-city " poverty

area

blacks

a suburb (rather than in a

did not, " , , , (O)ne cannot, "

he

concluded, " react, , , with anything other than the deepest pessimism

like Seattle that hitherto have not been favored, M

igra.!

third o

h~s in recent y ears accounted for I:)!l!Y~1:J()ut one~ ffiin from births, On the basis of "high gLowth , the reffimOderco" and other assum ptiOiiS,t'he ' Census projects increases in

fertility

central city populations between

1970 and 2000 of as much as

one- third, but on probably more realistic " low fertility

" assumptions,

tota1.35

a decrease of about 4 percent. Either way, the nonwhite population is expected to be about 40 percent of the Immigration will also contribute to the cities' growth, Under present law the anticipated level of about 400, 000 immigrants per year s population gain from will contribute about one- fifth of the nation 1970 to 1985, Illegal entries, most of them from Mexico, may swell estimates, they may the total very substantially: according to some more than double it. The legal immigrants will be mostly skilled and semi-skilled and the illegal mostly unskilled; almost all will settle in urban places,

--THE LOGIC OF METROPOLITAN GROWTH /

42 / THE UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED

Not only will there be more city dwellers in the coming decades but their incomes will be higher. In the most conservative forecasts (a

slower rate of population growth and

a slower rate of economic expansion), Gross National Product per capita in 1967 dollars is

expected to increase from $3, 937 in 1970 to $7, 218

in 2000, 36 As

people become more prosperous , they will buy more housing. To the extent that this involves their discarding at a faster rate the housing

that they already have (many may prefer to renovate what they will give more and better housing bargains to the not

have), it

well-off, encouraging them to move ever farther outward and thus eventually emptying the central city and bringing " blight" to suburbs that were new a decade or two ago, To the " pulling " effect of these bargains will be added two " pushing " ones: the p..b.~si~~tdeleriOLation

of central city housing (which , being the oldest , has been in use the longest) and the clearallceactivi~~~of urqan reI1!aVal and public works programs, which are expected to displace between half a million and two million families between 1965 and 1975, Among those

moving outward from the central city will be large numbers of Negroes, Efforts to keep them in the central city where their voting strength can be exploited are bound to fail , as are efforts to distribute them throughout white neighborhoods, In their quest for living space and jobs, relatively well-off Negroes, like the relatively well-off in other groups , are moving to the suburban ring. In the 1960 S blacks doubled their numbers in the suburbs of Los Angeles and Washington, D, C" and increased by more than one- half in the New York area. In the country as a whole ,

.-. n -

the black suburban population grew by

more than I. I million, bringing the total to more than 3. 5 million, Of these , almost half live in neighborhoods that conJa~f~wer than I percent Negr oes, and only about 15 percent live in " substantiaIry ore than 10 percent Negro) neighborhoods, 37 .Most liv n.whM h::Jv:e..k~n..~~lled " mil1i- ghettos " lying between white residen-

integrated"

principle of open occupancy, The pressure of court decisions against39 exclusionary zoning and similar Despite these influences, howpractices is hastening this process, ever , it is certain that large numbers of Negroes will live in the major central cities for at least several decades to come, If there is any check on outward expansion, it is probably the limited supply of vacant land, This supply will be used up faster than ever, not only because more people will be able to afford land, but also because they will be able to afford larger lots, (In the New York ove

them of the soundness of the

metropolitan region, fo.r example , th~_ next six

millio~eople to m

to new homes in the outlying suburbs are expected to take as much land as the ~evi~1:ls sixteen million !Q9k, Two- thirds of the land in these suburbs is now zoned for single- family houses on lots of a half acre or more, ) It will be many years before the frontier of vacant land

is reached, however, (Even in the New York region, where the

demand is greatest , the supply is expected to last for at least another generation, 40) And when it is at last reached , the outward movement will not stop abruptly; instead, two- and three-acre lots will probably be subdivided into half-acre ones, permitting movement from the older, higher- density rings of settlement to continue for some time, As the supply of vacant land diminishes, however, the price of it will rise and this will dampen the desire to use it lavishly. That the outlying suburbs of New York and other cities are zoned for large lots therefore indicates little about the density at which they will actually be built; the zoners there may not have anticipated how costly land would become and how sobering an effect this would have upon prospective buyers, In fact , the dampening effect of higher land prices in the suburbs has been operating for some time, Of the new housing for

units started in 1972 ,

42 percent were in apartment buildings

three or more families; in 1960 the comparable figure was 18 percent. As gasoline prices increase in response to the increased demand for

tial districts, As better-off suburbanites make ready to move farther out into the

oil in world markets suburbs will be built somewhat more compactly

suburban fringe in search of larger lots, they will relax zoning and other restrictions that have excluded the less well-off from suburban communities; as the need i~ find customers for their " downgraded"

smaller cars and later to modes of transportation using other sources of energy, In short , the trend of development will be modified but not essentially changed by rising costs of transportation. As the price of vacant land in the suburbs goes up, that of land and

properties grows, less and less exhortation will be needed to convince

but it seems

likely that the main adjustment will be initially

to

,"

THE LOGIC OF METROPOLITAN GROWTH /

44 / THE UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED

buildings in the central city will go down, As was pointed out earlier the central business district and with it the central city as a whole has been losing the monopoly of accessibility that made its land so valuable, As the exodus of commerce , industry, and population continues, the value of real estate in the central city will decline, Urban renewal will tend to slow this down: so long as it appears likely that the government will buy deteriorating property at its present market value , that value is not likely to fall. In a few parts of a city, speculation arising from uncertainty about governmental policies and other developments may hold values steady or even cause them to rise, (Land in the Shaw ghetto of Washington , D, c., was selling for more than $640 000 an acre in 1972 , a price which would make low- income " town houses, some of which were only sixteen feet wide and twenty-nine feet deep, cost at least $52 200 each, )41 But it is highly unlikely that such influences will prevent the decline of land

values in large districts of most central cities, The amount of public subsidy that would be required is now , and seems likely to remain far beyond what anyone would consider tolerable , a condition which will

.

probably discourage speculators, If the populations of the inner cities are not again replenished unskilled immigrants something that , in view of the large flow of illegal entrants from Mexico and the potentially large legal flow from Puerto Rico, cannot be taken for granted the time will eventually come when cleared land in the depopulated central city will be worth less than vacant land in the heavily populated suburbs, When this time comes , the direction of metropolitan growth will reverse itself: the well-off will move from the suburbs to the cities, probably

causing editorial writers to deplore the " flight to the central city and politicians to call for government programs to check it by rede-

\ veloping the subu~bs, -' i

Some tendencies toward(recentralization ave appeared, 42

First

advances in electronic data processing are making some offices into paper- processing factories ; these employ unskilled workers at the

bottom of the white-collar occupational ladder in jobs such as key punch operator. Second t!J~ computer and the recent technological advances in teleprocessing and time-sharing have also strongly reinforced the ability of a business enterprise to retain its head office and

management in a centralized location in the face of ever wider decentralization of operations, "43 Third, huge expenditures are being made for scientific research and development, Much of this work does not require great land space , is independent of manufacturing and materials locations , and is best done in close proximity to universities, The central city has lost its old monopoly on accessibility, however. At most , it will be one of several nuclei in a metropolitan area over which business activity and residential occupance are, as compared to spread, In the the " old- fashioned" city, rather evenly and thinly opinion of George Sternlieb, the older central cities, having lost their capacity to serve as effective staging areas for immigrants and other newcomers, no longer have any function except that of " sandbox they are places where the poor and the unskilled (the children) are left to occupy themselves with government social welfare programs (toys) while other people (the grown-ups) go about the serious business of making money, Presumably Sternlieb is exaggerating in order to make a point, ~~t i~ is idle to talk of bring~ng larg~_!l.l.!!!!~ers oB \:yelJ.::off backil1.tQ..1.he

central city, For the city

to c ompete

as a residential area with the

~ rge districts ofJ!- "Y.()_uld have tol1e completely rebuilt at very low densities. 'fEEls out of the question so long as people are

suburbs,

ving TilTbesedistric ts, To be sure, the government might build new housing somewhere else (where?) for the residents of the old neighborhoods and move them to it , forcibly if necessary, It might then tear down the existing structures and put up new ones , creating neighborhoods that would attract the well-off back from the suburbs, This plan would be fantastically expensive , of course , since it would mean destroying a great deal of useful housing, as well as stores, factories, churches , schools , and other facilities, Doing this would be insane if the purpose were nothing more than " civic patriotism" or the wish to confer benefits on the well-off, A case might perhaps be made for a wholesale exchange of population between the central city and the suburbs on the ground that the

preservation of democratic institutions requires it. But if such were the purpose , the redeveloped central city could not be occupied solely rich and poor , black and white or even mainly by the well-off would have to be settled in proximity to one another , sharing schools

~~

THE LOGIC OF METROPOLITAN GROWTH

46 / THE UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED

and other facilities, the object being to improve the quality of the community by their association, An undertaking of this sort would have the justification of aiming at an important public good, Whether it would, within reasonable probability, secure that good is doubtful however. For one thing, it would be hard to give the well-off the space necessary to bring them back from the suburbs and still have room for the large number of the not well-off who would have to be accommoall too likely, one of the requirement s of the well-off dated. If, as is

thattheybe i nsulated from " undesirab~~~'. t~e~obviously the Cityhytheiri c6- ld not be brought about on terms

reoccupation o

th~t- would- erye.- ~I1YH PJlbli&purpos e, Even on the most favorable view that is, assuming that stable , integrated neighof the possibilities the wisdom of, in effect , throwing a borhoods could be created large part of the city s physical plant on the scrap heap may well be questioned, To build " new towns " (actually small cities) when doing so involves abandoning or underutilizing existing facilities would be an even more costly venture since not only housing, schools , churches and stores, but everything else as well- factories , streets, water and sewer lines would have to be built new from the ground up. Here

again, one may say that if the object

is to create an integrated

community, and if that object can be attained in this way and in no other that entails smaller costs (so that abandoning existing streets sewer lines , and the like is unavoidable), the money is well spent. The undertaking would be enormously expensive , however, As Irving Hoch has remarked , in an inflationary age older cities have an advantage by virtue of possessing highways , utilities, and other elements of infra-structure " that were cheap to build, 45 He acknowledges that there may be disadvantages where these were put in place before the automobile came into wide use but , noting that few American new towns have been developed since the Civil War and also that the European cities destroyed during the war were rebuilt on the same sites, he concludes that established cities probably have some net long-run advantage, Alongside of his view, that of an economist , may be placed that of a demographer , Peter A. Morrison , who thinks it likely that most people wilreventually reside in a few megalopolises (large regions populated more or less contiguously

but at widely

varying densities) and that this will have advantages (the preservation of large, sparsely inhabited areas and increases in productivity due to economies of scale) but also dangers (concentration of the consumption of energy and water and of the generation of wastes may threaten

capacity), The dilemma cannot be , for (Morrison says) they escaped by building new towns, however

the environment s absorptive

would have to be built at the rate of about one a month in order to accommodate even a small fraction of the increase of population that will occur by the end of the century and building one would require a itself. Worse still, the construction camp half as large as the city

people who would be attracted to new cities would tend to be young precisely the kind most likely to move on after a and hypermobile short stay. Using new cities to deflect growth away from congested metropolitan areas or to alter the distribution of demographic population nationrealially, he concludes, " goes against the grain of ties, "46

well-off

The impracticability of attracting large numbers of the become before land prices there have

back into the central city

competitive with those in the suburbs (and without the use of large

in a very extreme form, to be sure, since from a newspaper report of a " semiManhattan is a special case the oldsubsidies) can be seen

nar " on the problems of owning and occupying one of

500 on the fashioned brownstone houses of which there are about 2, 47 Prices start at $ 100, 000 and go up to city s crime-ridden West Side. about $300 000, depending upon the condition of the building which in many instances must then be renovated. According to the report, about 1, 500 of the brownstones have been renovated in the last ten years and about another 500 are " ripe " for renovation and available for purchase now, Presumably purchasers will be found, despite the prices and the hazards of the district. But the real problem, of course is not to induce a few hundred very wealthy people to buy houses a few blocks from Lincoln Center or Columbia University but to bring tens of thousands of moderately well-off families back to such unglamorous places as Brooklyn and the Bronx, The three imperatives listed at the beginning of this chapter namely, rate of population growth, technology of transportation, and

,"

,"

48

THE UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED

distribution of income

THE LOGIC OF METROPOLITAN GROWTH

place stringent limits on policy, Except as i Suppose , again, that in the city s earliest days the authorities had

may relax one or more of them and so change the logic of metropoli enacted a housing code requiring the demolition of all substandard tan growth, government- even the wisest and most powerful govern dwellings, (The committee of 1857 did , in fact, propose a regulation

ment must work within the limits set by these imperatives. It ma against the renting of cellars, 49) Such a code , if enforced, would have hasten or delay the unfolding of the logic of growth and it may maLprevented the city from growing fast and from ever becoming a very important ones sometimes such adaptations as are possibl, metropolis, 50 In order to grow fast , the city had to become a center of within it, But given the premises, it cannot prevent the conclusion warehouses, shops, and factories, which meant that it had to have a plentiful supply of cheap labor, which meant that it had to have a Consider the case of New York City, The state legislative commit plentiful supply of housing that such labor could afford, If all the

from following,

tee of 1857, whose report was quoted earlier, confidently asserted thahousing had been decent by the standards of the time, some of the wise and simple laws, " if only they had been adopted in time , woul "labor required for the city s growth could not have afforded to live in

have checked or prevented the evils it deplored, With such laws , ithe city at all. said the city of New York would now exhibit more gratifying bills 0 I t may be argued that if the city had insisted, adequate housing health, more general social comfort and prosperity and less , far leswould have been provided and the extra cost in effect added to the expenditure for the support of pauperism and the punishment 0: wage bill and so passed on to the consumer, But no city could have crime. " It blamed the authorities of an earlier time for not havinadded very much to its wage bill without worsening its competitive passed the necessary laws; those authorities , it said were unmindfu position vis- a.-vis other areas, Had all places provided adequate housof the future public good, precisely as we , in our day and generation, ing, the city would have been under a cost handicap, and its developare pertinaciously regardless of our posterity s welfare, ment would have been impeded accordingly. The fundamental fact were Perhaps the authorities unmindful of the future public good '. was that it would have cost more to provide adequate housing in the Whether they were or were not does not matter much; they could n0 . city than elsewhere, (To be sure , had the extra costs been imposed

"48

the city would not i ncome level , and it is these factor have been handicapped, but ~ecause of political b ~~aries and other that account not only for theIr failure to change the pattern of growt , institutional arrangements thIS was not a real possIbIlIty. but also for the failure of authorities in later times as well , including If society had been willing to accept a curtailment of the rate of of course , the committee of 1857 itself, economic growth for the sake of preventing overcrowding and bad What , one wonders , are the wise and simple laws that would hav . housing in the city, it could have prevented people who could not saved the situation if only they had been made soon enough? The idea support themselves properly from coming to the city at all, By reof controlling land Use by a zoning ordinance is a recent one , bu stricting the supply of labor in the city, the authorities could have suppose that when Manhattan was first settled an ordinance had forced the price of it up, Keeping the farm boys on the farms and in any case , have changed the imperatives of population growth .

upon the affluent

regardless of where they lived,

transportation technology, a nd

limited the spread of warehouses , factories, and other objectionable stopping immigration of all but skilled workers from abroad could land uses, If such an ordinance had been made and enforced , the old have checked or prevented the evils that the committee deplored, But Knickerbocker mansions would still be standing but there would of course , the growth of New York would also have been checked or be no city. Nor , if all towns had made and enforced such ordinances,- prevented, The old Knickerbocker mansions might still be there, but would there be cities anxwhere, If towns are to grow into cities and' the Statue of Liberty would cities into metropolises , old residential districts necessarily must It was impossible both to allow unrestricted immigration and to eliminate substandard housing, If free to do so, people would come to

decline and disappear.

not be.

50

THE UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED

THE LOGIC OF METROPOLITAN GROWTH

the cities from the rural backwaters of this country and from abroad to require the conversion of existing tenements to other uses was not and they would keep on coming until the opportunities in the city as "practicable, 55 And in 1955 a mayor s committee estimated that about they perceived them were no better . than those in the places wher . a million persons (268 000 families) would be displaced if the they were, Since opportunities in much of the world were extremel multiple-dwelling code were strictly enforced, poor , the movement into the city was bound to be massive and to Redistributing" income was another possibility, and it, too, was continue almost indefinitely if allowed. Improving conditions in th tried, Subway and highway construction was subsidized, as was the city while allowing migration to continue freely could have no effec purchase of new homes, Insofar as these and other measures put but to establish the final equilibrium at a different point - i, e" one at , people who would otherwise not have gotten there so soon in the which more ofthe poor would have come to the city, As Jacob A. Riis class of the well-off, they hastened the decongestion of the city, But taxes that could not be wrote in The Poor in Great Cities (1895), if it were possible for New since they had to be paid for by taxes such measures would necessarily have York to " shut her door against the immigration of the world and still raised solely from the rich maintain the conditions of today, I should confidently predict a steady had some contrary and offsetting effect as well, In any event , migraprogress that would leave little of the problem for the next generation. tion into the city always replenished at least partially what the New to wrestle with, But that is only another way of saying, ' if New York York legislative committee of 1857 had called the " cl~ss of tenantry were not New York.' living from hand to mouth , loose in morals, improvident in habits If the authorities had been able to find a miraculously cheap and' degraded and squalid as beggary itself." Redistribution of income fast means of transporting large numbers of people from the factory could not eliminate poverty in the city so long as opportunities in district to the outskirts of the city, the evils that the select committee any part of the world were conspicuously worse than there and so deplored would easily have been ended, For a time , in fact , reformers long as people were free to move to it. in New York thought the subway might accomplish wonders, (" If the happy day ever comes when a poor man can be carried to the green fields of Long Island , New Jersey, or Westchester County for five cents , then a wonderful change will take place " one of them wrote, 53) The subway and the trolley did put an end to " rabbit warrens, " but.( despite the new transportation technology, there were still many people in the large cities who either could not afford to move away from the old district close to factories, stores , and offices or did not wish to do so, In 1893 a member of the American Economic Association declared that the confident belief of a few years before that rapid transit would solve New York' s housing problems had proved to be a vain hope, So long as large numbers of workers had to (or chose to) live near

"52

their jobs , it was impossible to avoid high rents and overcrowding in the large cities , a conclusion that the reformers of every generation by"! finally had to accept, It was impossible , a.

foug~ ~gainst

city commission concluded in 1900 , to design a tenement house that was both adequate and commercially feasible; moreover , legislation

THE IMPERATIVES OF CLASS

however , nothing in the logic of growth says that such districts must

be squalid or crime-ridden,

To account for these and certain other features of metropolitan

States, a second explanatory principle must, so to speak, be placed over the first. This is the concept of class,

development in the United

CHAPTER THREE

The purpose of this chapter is to show how certain patterns of

i' perception

, taste , attitude , and behavior operate (within the limits set by the logic of growth) to influence the city s form and the nature of its

The Imperatives of Class , , , the dominant aim of our society seems to be to middle-

class- ify all of its members.

John Dollard, 1937

problems, It is one of the main contentions of this book that these patterns , no less than the logic of growth , are constraints which the policy maker must take into account and which limit what he may accomplish,

HE logic of growth does not explain all that needs explaining, For one thing, it does not explain why the city expanded outward as fast as it did, When they moved, the well-off were strongly impelled by economic forces to move outward first to the outlying neighborhoods of the central city, then to inlying suburbs, and later to outlying

ones, But the well-off did not have to move as soon as they did or in such numbers, If the trolley car and then the automobile were causes of their moving, they were also effects of their desire to move. (Philadelphia was the " city of homes " long before rapid transit was

American sociologists define social class in very different ways: by objective criteria (income , schooling, occupation), subjective criteria (attitudes, tastes, values), and position in a deference hierarchy (who looks up to whom), among others, Whatever criteria are used , it turns out that essentially the same pattern of traits is found to be characteristic of the class, " All who have studied the lower class " writes Lee Rainwater, one of those who has studied it most , have produced findings that suggest a " distinct patterning" of attitudes , values, and modes of behavior, 4 The same can be said of those who have studied the working, middle , and upper classes, Each class exhibits a charac-

, coninvented, Adna F. Weber pointed out apropos of this in 1899,1) teristic patterning that extends to all aspects of life: manners whatever. In the United Also, the logic of growth does not explain why a considerable propor- sumption, child-rearing, sex, politics, or States over the past half century these patternings have been tion of the well-off failed to move at all. In 1971

, as previously noted

although never with the completeness that an ethnogramore than a quarter of a million families with incomes in excess of. described in hundreds of books and articles. By and large $ 15, 000 a year lived in the " poverty areas " of fifty-one of the largest pher would want

cities, 2 Obviously some people evaluate the advantages of central city

these many accounts agree.

versus suburban living very differently than do others, Furthermore the logic of growth does not explain the existence of slums, Strictly. speaking, a slum is not simply a district of low- quality housing; f rather , it is one in which a squalid and wretched style of life is widespread, 3 The logic of growth does require that , in general , the lowest- income people live in the oldest , highest- density, most run- . down housing, which will be nearest to the factories, warehouses, stores, and offices of the inner , or downtown , part of the central city;

Various principles have been advanced by which to rationalize or explain " the association of the many, heterogeneous traits that have been found to constitute each " distinct patterning, " Probably no one namely, of these is best for all purposes, For the purpose here the most standpoint problems from a policy analysis of social promising principle seems to be that of psychological orientation

toward the future, Consequently, in what follows in this and later chapters much will be made of the concepts " present- " and " future-

~'

Th

54 / THE UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED

THE IMPERATIVES OF CLASS

155

orientaf " e theory or explanator h h lOn, ypot esls (It cannot b those who stress the importance of " social heredity, " They think of

called a " fact " although there i s s ~me evI~ence to support it)5 is tha the individual as largely formed in infancy and childhood by influthe many traits that consti tute patternIn " are 11 consequences ences that reflect the collectIve experIence of the group; by the tIme he In Irect If not direct of onzon t at IS cha rac enstlc of a class. . has reached adolescence , his ways of thinking and feeling have been Thus , the traits that constitute wh t~s ca ed lowerass culture or m . ineradicably marked by these influences, " (C)ertain possibly critical style are consequences of the ,aex me present-on entation of that emotional, linguistic, and cognitive patterns associated with social class, The lower-class erso Ives rom moment to , e IS background are already present at the age of three " WrItes Jerome S,

11

elt er unable or unwilling to tak moment ~ ~ccount o! ~h e future or to control

his impulses, Improvidence an

quences of this failure to take th

~eSp?nSlblhty are di rect fl

. Bruner, an educational psychologist. The young child' s social back, he adds, influences the way he learns to set goals , mobilize

conse. . ~e Into account (WhICh is not to

ground

means, and delay or fail to delay gratification, say that these traits may not h e uot ~r ave ~us ~s as w ~ll), and these' On the other side , there are . those who consider these early consequences have further conse que bc Improvident and irre- influences relatively unimportant in shaping later behavior as comsponsible , he is likely also to be uns I ed heIng ~;~, to move frequently from pared to situational factors like income , schooling, and social standone dead-end job to another t b ~ p~or usba~~ and father. , , , ing that are either avenues to or obstacles in the way of opportunity, It is useful to employ the ;a 0 e ~bIllty or willingness to; Elliot Liebow , for example , in Tally s Corner a book about a group provide for the future to ac ~t are characteris- ' of Negro streetcorner men in Washington , D, c., after acknowledging tic of the other class culture :s ~e11 i e The workIng traits th , class is more ' that each generation provides " role models " for the succeeding one future-oriented than the lower ~l ss u t ess than the mIddle class , the ' goes on to assert that " of much greater importance for the possibilities middle class in turn is less fut e-onente d than the upper. At the. of change , however, is the fact that many similarities between the upper end of the class-cultur sca e e traIts are all " ' OpposIte those lower-class Negro father and son (or mother and daughter) do not at t e lower result fro cultural transmiss~on ' but from the fa~t that ~he son goes It mu ~t be understood that the tly present- ,and future- . out and Independently experIences the same faIlures, In the same : orIented Individuals are ideal t constructs; ~he tIme horizon areas, and for much the same reasons as his father. What appears as a , theory is intended as an analyf~ca YiS ~oo~rf no ~ ~s a precise description of " dynamic, self-sustaining cultural process is , in part at least, a relasocial reality, 6 In this it is li ~ amIh ~~ cate~ory of economic tively simple piece of social machinery which turns out, in rather analysis , the " perfectly compet ~ive a ark "8 Thus, , In which all buyers and mechanical fashion, independently produced 100k-alikes, sellers have rfect info rmat IOn an none IS able tOIn uence the prIce when Richard , one of the streetcorner men, squanders a week' s pay In at whIch anything is sold, I ~a world , of course , there never two days, it is not because he is unaware of or unconcerned with his was, and never will be such na e ~ that markets are more or less future, ~' He does so precisely because he is aware of the future and the competitive is enough 'howev n:ar 0 met a e the concept indispensable in hopelessness of it all, economics, It is intiess to InqUIre ' er ow man are per ectly VIOUS Y rom a po ICY standpoInt It makes a great deal of dlffer-

end,erfec th l

present- or future-oriented (10

~ ~~p~r , class) :- undoubtedly ence whether one emphasizes " social heredity " or " social mathere are none, If the concepts wer : useo u , It IS In helpIng one to think chinery, " One who emphasizes the former will expect little from about behavior that approxim; ;r e ~ ~orresponds to the model. measures that are intended to change the individual by improving his The general agreement tha ;ls ~ as to t~e content of the several opportunities; he will be inclined to think that one must first change class cultures does not 6'~tend e something ~ ~ e theorIes about ~he causes the culture in which the individual is so largely formed cultural difference and of cult ura c ange, On the one side if it can be done at generation or two at least a , there are that takes time

of

56 / THE UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED

THE IMPERATIVES OF CLASS

all, By an odd quirk of reasoning, the difficulty perhaps impossibility of bringing about change quickly and according to plan seems to some social scientists to justify giving the " social machinery " theory preference as an explanatory

and heredity " versus " soCial machinery question. Clearly the subcultures that are described below are not fixed and unchangeable, Even cultures (as opposed to subcultures) of the " social

sometimes change with remarkable speed, Witness , for example , cultural revolution " of China , during a

the

stage of which once-

venerated scholars were dragged through the streets by their Red

Guard students, If, however , one takes at all seriously the principal insights of social science represented by the concepts of culture personality, and social structure one must expect a high degree of

continuity in most behavior. Indeed, one must expect behavior sometimes to persist in the face of conditions that offer powerful inducements to change, The time- horizon theory does not prejudge this question, It merely

asserts that the traits constituting

them, If it should be shown that Richard is not present-oriented, what

principle even though its truth is crucial for present purposes

value may be less. For the present it suffices to alert the reader to the difficulty

the relevance

tions about class cultures that are summarized below does not in the explain least depend upon that of the time- horizon theory used to "

a culture or life style are best

understood as resulting from a greater or lesser ability (or desire) to provide for the future, Whether the time horizon of an individual is mainly passed on to the individual by cultural transmission, mainly an adaptation that he more or less rationally makes to the realities of his situation (poverty or racial discrimination , for example) or far the most likely possibility the outcome of a complex interaction between both sets of forces, has to be decided (so far as it can

be decided) in accordance with the facts of particular cases and not in the abstract,!1

The reader is asked to keep in mind that members of a " class "

as

the word is used here are people who share a " distinct patterning of attitudes, values, and modes of behavior, not people of like income occupation , schooling, or status, A lower class individual is likely to be unskilled and poor , but it does not follow from this that persons who are unskilled and poor are likely to be lower class, (That italians eat spaghetti does not imply that people who eat spaghetti are Italian!) The reader is reminded also that the truth of the observa-

namely, that he had others like him would have to be accounted exhibit a distinct patterning of traits for in some other way, Strong correlations exist between IQ and socioeconomic status, and some scholars have presented evidence tending to show that they are due in large part to genetic factors,!2 Ability (or willingness) to take

account of the future does not appear to

have much relation to

intelligence or IQ; however, it is not implausible to conjecture that some genetic factor may influence it, The position taken here , however, is that time horizon is a social , not a biological , product. The Upper Class, 13 At the most future-oriented end of the scale the upper- class individual expects a long life, looks forward to the future of his children, grandchildren, great- grandchildren (the family line ), and is concerned also for the future of such abstract entities as the community, nation, or mankind, He is confident that within rather wide limits he can, if he exerts himself to do so, shape the future to accord with his purposes. He therefore has strong incentives to invest " in the improvement of the future situation - i, to sacrifice some present satisfaction in the expectation of enabling someone (himself, his children, mankind, etc, ) to enjoy greater satisfactions at some future time, Future-oriented culture teaches the individual that he would be cheating himself if he allowed gratification of his impulses (for example, for sex or violence) to interfere with his

provision for the future, self-respecting, self-

The upper- class individual is markedly confident, and self-sufficient. He places great value on independence curiosity, creativity, happiness, " developing one s potentialities to the full " and consideration for others, In rearing his children, he stresses these values along with the idea that one should govern one s relations internal with others (and , in the final analysis, with one s self) by standards rather than by conformity to an externally given code (" not because you re told to but because you take the other person into consideration ),!4 The upper- class parent is not alarmed if his chil-

,"

58

THE UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED

dren remain unemployed and unmarried to the age of thirty, espe-

cially if they remain in schooI.I5 He does not mind being alone;

indeed , he requires a good deal of privacy, He wants to express himself (he may carry self-expression to the point of eccentricity), and, in principle at least , he favors self-expression by others, He takes a tolerant , perhaps even an encouraging, view of unconventional behavior in sex , the arts, and politics. He is mindfui of the rights of

others and wants issues to be settled on their merits and by rational discussion, He deplores bigotry (which is not to say that he has no prejudices) and abhors violence in personal relations, It will be seen that two features of this culture the disposition to postpone present satisfaction for the sake of improving matters in the future and the desire to " express one s personality are somewhat antagonistic, Upper- class (that is , future-oriented) culture permits the individual to emphasize either theme, If he thinks that his means (money, power , knowledge , and the like) are almost certainly ade-

quate to maintain him and his " line " throughout the future he envisions, the future-oriented individual has no incentive to " invest" (that , trade present for future satisfaction) and may therefore emphasize self-expression, 16 If, on the other hand , he thinks that his means may not be adequate (he will think this, of course , no matter how large his means if his plans for the future are grand enough), he is likely to emphasize self- discipline so that he may acquire the larger stock of

means that he thinks he needs, Insofar as he chooses the expressive alternative , the upper- class individual' s style of life may resemble the present-oriented one of the lower class, But whereas the lower- class individual is capable only of present-oriented behavior , the upperclass one can choose, He may, for example , do some things that require a high degree of skill , discipline, and judgment , living the rest of the time from moment to moment. Even if he lives from moment to moment all the time , he does so by choice it is his " thing, " his mode of self-expression, By contrast , the " true" present-orientedness of the lower class is both unrelieved and involuntary, The upper- class individual feels a strong attachment to entities (formal organizations , th e neighborhood , the nation , the world)

toward which he stands , ~r wants to stand, in a relation of fellowshipP He sees the " community " (or " society ) as having long-range

THE IMPERATIVES OF CLASS

goals and the ability to shape the future. He tends to feel that it is one s responsibility to " serve " the community by assisting in efforts perhaps because , his own goals being longfor its improvement range ones, he has a stake in the future of the community, At any rate

he tends to be active in " public service " organizations and to feel a strong obligation (which he does not always act upon, of course) to contribute time , money, and effort to worthy causes.18 (In the South the upper-class attitude in these matters is different. As W, J, Cash remarked , the aristocratic ideal of the planter became corrupted by

frontier individualism, which, " while willing enough to ameliorate the specific instance, relentlessly laid down as its basic social postulate the doctrine that every man was completely and wholly responsible for himself, "19) The middle- class individual expects to be still in The Middle Class,

his prime at sixty or thereabouts; he plans ahead for his children and , less future-oriented than the ideal perhaps his grandchildren , but typical member of the upper class, he is not likely to think in terms of

line " or to be much concerned about " mankind" in the distant

future, He, too, is confident of his ability to influence the future, but he does not expect to influence so distant a future as does the upperclass individual , nor is he as confident about the probable success of his efforts to influence it, The middle- class individual's self- feelings are a little less strong than those of the upper- class individual; he is also somewhat less desirous of privacy, Although he shows a good deal of independence and creativity and a certain taste for selfeccentricity, He is less likely considers upper- class individual to have means that he

expression, these traits rarely lead to

than the

adequate to assure a satisfactory level of goal attainment throughout and the selfhis anticipated future, Therefore getting ahead" improvement and sacrifice of impulse gratification that it requires will be more likely to take precedence with him over " the expression of one s personality. " In the lower middle class, self- improvement is a

principal theme of life , whereas in the upper middle class, selfexpression is emphasized, Almost without exception, middle- class people want their children to go to college and to acquire the kind of formal training that will help them " get ahead, " In matters of sex, the " and middle- class individual is (in principle, at least) " conventional

60 / THE UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED

in art and politics , too , he is more ready than the upper-

THE IMPERATIVES OF CLASS / 61 class individ-

ual to accept the received opinion, He has regard for the rights of others; he deplores bigotry and abhors violence, He does not , however , hold these attitudes as strongly as do members of the upper

class. The middle- class individual does not feel as strong a

sense of

responsibility to the community as does the upper-class one , and he defines the community somewhat less inclusively. He wants (in principle , at least) to " belong " to a community and to be of " service " to it and accordingly he joins organizations , ~ncluding " service " ones, (In the lower middle class, the taste for public service and reform is relatively weak: the individual usually votes against public improvements that will not benefit him directly, ) The middle- class individual however , is less willing than the upper- class one to give time , money, and effort for public causes, The Working Class. The working-class individual does not " invest

, nor in so

as heavily in the future distant a future , as does the He expects to be an "

middle- class one, 20

old man " by the time he is fifty, and his time horizon is fixed accordingly, Also, he has less confidence than the middle- class individual in his ability to shape the

future and has a stronger sense of being at the mercy of fate , a " power structure " and other uncontrollable forces, For this reason , perhaps, he attaches more importance to luck than does the middle- class individual. He is self-respecting and self-confident, but these feelings

are less marked in him than in the middle- class individual and they extend to a somewhat narrower range of matters, As compared to the middle- class individual , he is little disposed toward either selfimprovement or self-expression; " getting ahead" and " enlarging one horizon " have relatively little attraction for him, In rearing his children , he emphasizes the virtues of neatness and cleanliness, honesty, obedience , and respect for external authority, (As David Riesman has observed , the problem in the working class is not , as in the upper middle class , to stimulate children; rather , it is to control them teach them faith , respect , and obedience , rather than independence of mind and development oLtalents, "21) If his children do not go to college , the working-class individual does not mind much, In his relations with others , he is often authoritarian and intolerant , and

sometimes aggressive, He is not only a bigot but a self-righteous one, class Violence and brutality are less shocking to him than to middleas normal up to a point persons; indeed, he regards them middle expressions of a masculine style, To the working class, the classclass appears somewhat lacking in masculinity, and the upper appears a male member of which may even weep under stress queer. decidedly feminine or " The working- class individual's deepest attachment is to his family (most of his visiting is with relatives, not friends), However, his for relationship to his wife and children is not as stable or as close as these relainstance, does not involve as much companionship 22 Privacy is of less importance tionships tend to be in the middle class, to him: he likes to have people around, and the noises and smells that they make seldom bother him (when he goes on vacation it is not to crowded the country, which he finds too quiet and lonely, but to resorts), The sense of sharing a purpose with others is not as important to him as it is to members of the upper classes, and when he joins fun an organization it is more likely to be for companionship and " than for " service " or civic improvement, He may vote, especially if someone asks him to as a favor, His opinions on public matters are highly conventional (it does not seem to occur to him that he is entitled to form opinions of his own), and his participation in politics is motivated not by political principles but by ethnic and party loyalties, the appeal of personalities , or the hope of favors from the precinct captain, The Lower Class.

At the present-oriented

end of the scale , the

lower-class individual lives from moment to moment. If he has any awareness of a future control: things happen

, it is of something fixed, fated, beyond his to

him, he does not

make

them happen,

Impulse governs his behavior, either because he cannot discipline himself to sacrifice a present for a future satisfaction or because he has no sense of the future, He is therefore radically improvident: whatever he cannot use immediately he considers valueless, His

action "23 take and certainly over any work precedence over everything else routine, He works only as he must to stay alive , and drifts from one unskilled job to another, taking no interest in his work, As compared

bodily needs (especially for sex) and his taste for "

" "

62 / THE UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED

to the working- class

individual ,

THE IMPERATIVES OF CLASS

he " doesn

t want much success

knows he couldn t get it even if he wanted to , and doesn t want what might help him get success, "24 Although his income is usually much

lower than that of the working- class individual , the market value of his car , television, and household appliances and playthings is likely to be considerably more, He is careless with his things, however , and

even when nearly new, they are likely to be permanently out of order for lack of minor repairs, 25 His body, too , is a thing " to be worked out but not repaired" ; he seeks medical treatment only when practically forced to do

so: " symptoms

that do

not incapacitate

are often

ignored, "26 The lower- class individual has a feeble , attenuated sense of self; he

suffers from feelings of self-contempt and inadequacy, and is often apathetic or dejected. (In her discussion of " very low- lower class families , Eleanor Pavenstadt notes that " the saddest , and to us the outstanding characteristic of this group, with adults

and children alike , was the self- devaluation, "27) In his relations with others he is suspicious and hostile , aggressive yet dependent. He is unable to

maintain a stable relationship with a mate; commonly he does not marry, (" The evidence is unambiguous and powerful " writes Marc

Fried, " that

the lowest social classes have the highest rates of severe

psychiatric disorder, . ,, "28) He feels no attachment to community,

neighbors, or friends (he has companions , not friends), resents all authority (for example , that of policemen , social workers , teachers, landlords, employers), and is apt to think

that he has been " rail-

roaded" and to want to " get even, " He is a nonparticipant: he belongs

to no voluntary organizations, has no political interests , and does not vote unless paid to do so, The lower-class household is usually female- based, The woman who heads it is likely to have a succession of mates who contribute

intermittently to its support but take little or no part in rearing the children. In managing the children , the mother (or aunt , or grandmother) is characteristically impulsive: once children have passed

The stress on " masculinity,

action, "

risk- taking, conquest,

lower- class life extraordinarily

fighting, and " smartness " makes violent. However, much of the violence is probably more an expression of mental illness than of class culture, The incidence of serious mental illness is greater in the lower class than in any of the others, Moreover, the nature of lower- class culture is such that much behavior that in another class would be considered bizarre seems routine, class In its emphasis on " action " and its utter instability, lower-

culture seems to be more attractive to men than to

women, Gans

writes:

The woman tries to develop a stable routine in the midst of poverty and deprivation; the action-seeking man upsets it. In order to have any male relationships, however, the woman must participate to some extent in his

episodic life style, On rare occasions , she may even pursue it herself. Even way then, however , she will try to encourage her children to seek a routine , at least in of life, Thus the woman is much closer to working class culture

her aspirations , although she is not often successful in achieving them,

will be used to refer to In the chapters that follow , the term normal class class culture that is not lower class, The implication that lowerculture is pathological

seems fully warranted both because of the

relatively high incidence of mental illness in the lower class and also because human nature seems loath to accept a style of life that is so main reason for using the radiCally present-oriented, This is not the word is needed to some however, Rather, it is that normal word designate the sector of the class-cultural continuum that is not lower class, and no other word seems preferable on the whole. From the beginning, the cities of the United States have had upper, strength of the middle , working, and lower classes, The relative

various classes has varied greatly from time to time and place to place , although the nature of the class cultures has not. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the free population of the United descendants of

is likely at an early age to join a corner gang

States was predominantly middle class, Most were English and American yeomen, artisans, and tradesmen, a stratum of society that had long had good opportunities to better itsOld condition 32 The Stock ability to do SO,

man,

future-oriented virtues of self- discipline and denial

babyhood they are likely to be neglected or abused, and at best they never know what to expect"next, A boy raised in such a household

and to learn from the gang the " tough"

of other such boys style of the lower- class

and had been confident of its prominent place to the American inherited a culture that gave , industry, thrift,

,"

- "

64 / THE UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED

THE IMPERATIVES OF CLASS / 65

and respect for law and order. He was sure that these virtues would be rewarded by success; he expected to " get on " and to " improve himself' in material and other ways, The Puritans had come to America with the intention of establishing ideal communities a city upon a hill" and the millennial impulse , still powerful , took many forms in the first half of the nineteenth century. In the towns and cities , most early Americans, especially those of English origin, ' were skilled craftsmen or tradesmen. Of the few in New England who were day laborers, nearly all could read and write and nearly all voted, The number of working- and lower- class people was by no means insignificant , however , especially in the cities, In every sizable city

there were transient laborers and in the seaports, sailors , and in inland cities like Cincinnati and St. Louis, boatmen , wagoners , and drifters , who, like Huckleberry Finn s father , lived from hand to

mouth , worked only when they had to, drank and fought prodigiously, felt no tie to the community, and left their women and children behind

"36

painful contrast to the general air of cleanliness and comfort.

After 1840 immigration increased rapidly, the immigrants coming first Irish and then, after 1885, mainly from peasant cultures that were more presentsouthern Italian and eastern European oriented than those of New England, Great Britain, and northern Europe, Coming from places where ordinary people had never had opportunities to rise by effort and enterprise , these immigrants, it is plausible to conjecture, tended to see the world as a place ruled by fate or luck. Most were probably more concerned with survival from day to day than with getting ahead, and the idea that one might get ahead improvementby saving and investing - by some form of self-

must have been unfamiliar to most and unintelligible to some. On the other hand, that they chose to emigrate strongly implies that they were not all Timothy L. Smith,

present-oriented, According to the historian

" Long before the ship on which he traveled

touched the docks, many an immigrant had inquired carefully of to fend for themselves or to be looked after at public expense once I , the lessons he those he met what conditions were that he must "37 face Those who looked they had moved on. 34 In every city there also were unassimilated must learn to make his venture a success. immigrants from countries Catholic ones in which " normal" ahead were most numerous , one suspects, before the introduction behavior tended to be relatively present-oriented, It is safe to say, of steamships reduced the duration of the voyage from several weeks however , that transients and Catholic immigrants did not comprise to several days, among townsmen rather than peasants, and among the whole of the working- and lower- class population, In Boston those for whom the alternative to immigration was not the prospect , for example , which in 18 I7 had only about four hundred Catholics, the of immediate starvation. " The emigrants of this year are not like Old Stock American residents must have patronized the city noted during the peak Cork Examiner those of former ones, " the s two from thousand prostitutes (one for every six males above the age of sixrunning away of the Irish emigration, "they are now actually teen), hundreds of liquor shops , and the gambling h ~uses open ni "38

?ht I

and day, It must also have been the Old Stock BostonIans who denIed the mayor , Josiah Quincy, reelection after he waged a vigorous war on vice,

Eventually, as immigration increased , the working and lower

classes especially the latter did come to consist disproportionately of Catholic immigrants, In 1832 , for example , the South Boston Almshouse held almost twice as many immigrants as natives, " To see anything like indigence or idleness " a visitor to New England from abroad wrote a few years later we must penetrate into the purlieus in the seaport towns, occupied 15y the Irish laboring population.

districts inhabited by the Irish and the Negroes formed

" The

, he said

fever and disease and hunger. . , ,

Among the Old Stock Americans it was a rare day laborer who could not read, write , and cipher; among the peasant immigrants it present-oriented was a rare one who could, The immigrants from cultures were slow to see the advantages of education and of selfobservers it improvement generally, Even to some sympathetic appeared that many of them would as soon live in hovels and shanties as not. Unlike the Old Stock Americans and the more future-oriented , the peasant immiimmigrants from England and northern Europe grants ~eldom patronized the free mechanics libraries. Very few became skilled workers, In part , perhaps , this was because employers,

most of whom were native- born, were prejudiced against them; in

THE IMPERATIVES OF CLASS / 67

66 / THE UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED

part also , however, it was probably because the present-oriented immigrants like the Jews, whose native culture was future-oriented, notably the outlook and style did not suit the requirements of work and organiza- these tendencies were highly congenial , but to others tion. they were alien and distasteful. Eventually, however, futureall the Irish

It was symptomatic of

these different attitudes toward self-

improvement and " getting on "

that compulsory school attendance

laws were adopted only after large-scale peasant immigration got under way. In Massachusetts, for example , the first such law was passed in 1852 and required all children between the ages of eight and fourteen to attend for twelve weeks each year. Until then it had been taken for granted that anyone able to go to school would not fail to do so.

The Jewish immigrants were very different from the peasant peoples. Like the Old Stock Americans , they were future-oriented. They believed, as had the Puritans, who were in many ways like them , that they were under a special obligation to assist in the realization of God' s plan for the future. The idea of making sacrifices in the expectation of future rewards came naturally to them. Even more than the Old Stock American , the Jewish immigrant worked to acquire the capital (not only money and other material goods but also knowledge skill , character , attachment to family and community, and so on), that would enable him to rise. Jacob A. Riis wrote: The poorest Hebrew knows the poorer he is , the better he knows it that knowledge is power , and power as the means of getting on in the world that has spurned him so long, is what his soul yearns for. He lets no opportunity slip to obtain it. Day- and night-schools are crowded with his children , who learn rapidly and with ease, Every synagogue , every second rear tenement or dark back- yard, has its school and its school master , with his scourge to intercept those who might otherwise escape,

The future-oriented ideal diffused rapidly throughout the popula-

tion. In the latter half of the nineteenth century the whole nation seemed suddenly seized with a passion for self- improvement: in every city and in thousands of towns and villages there were lyceum discussions, Chautauquas , evening lectures, and the like. Self- improvement implied community improvement , and the Old Stock American (originally Puritan) idea that it wa~'-everyone s obligation to do what he could to bring the millennial hope to fulfillment and to create " a city on a hill" became the generally accepted doctrine of " service. " To

immigrant groups succumbed to the Old Stock American,

and then as oriented ideal. Even Negroes , whose isolation as slaves excluded them

Southern farmhands might, one would think, have

from the culture almost altogether, were drawn toward the ideal. Although they traveled at very different rates of speed, all ethnic and racial groups were headed in the same cultural direction: from less to more future-oriented. Movement upward along the scale of class culture tended to follow sacrificed the

.increases in income and opportunity. Those people

present for the future who had reason to think that doing so would be in some sense profitable , and the greater the prospective rewards, the more willing they were to accept the discipline and to put forth the effort required. People generally had good grounds for, not believing that many rose the future-oriented virtues would payoff. To be sure mythology claimed, but it was very from rags to riches, as the common for the son of an unskilled laborer to become a semiskilled or , teacher, or a skilled one and for

his

son to emerge as a manager

professional. 40

It is not clear, however, whether those who moved up the occupaabsorbed a tional , income , and status ladders did so because they had , that Patrick

, for example more future-oriented culture. It is possible Kennedy, who came to this country a laborer in 1848 and was still one when he died, was present-oriented and that it was because his son, Patrick Joseph, was somehow affected by the future-oriented atmosphere of Boston that he (the son) became a leading saloonkeeper and his had the foresight to send mirabile dictu ward politician and son, Joseph P., to the Boston Latin School and then to Harvard

College. But it is also possible that the original Patrick was just as future-oriented as his son and that he remained a laborer his life made all rising too because the circumstances of his time and place

difficult for him. It makes a great difference whether one supposes that ( I) the American environment instilled in the immigrant a more future-oriented view; (2) it merely gave scope to those individuals whose view was such to begin with; or (3) it produced both effects.

68

THE UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED

From every ethnic group,

including, of course , the Old Stock

American , some individuals were born into the lower class and others dropped into it from above. As the sociologist David Matza has written, Each experience of ethnic mobility leaves a sediment which appears to be trapped in slum life , whether as a result of insistence on maintaining traditional peasant values , or as a result of family disorganization , relatively lower intelligence , more emotional problems , or just plain misfortune, These are the dregs who settle into the milieu of disreputable poverty and perpetuate its distinctive characteristics, It is plausible to conjecture that the

more present-oriented the culture of an ethnic group, the larger the proportion of its members

who became lower class (similarly, the more future-oriented a group culture , the higher the proportion who entered the upper classes). The Irish , for example , contributed heavily to the lower class as compared to the Jews, From 1885 to 1890, persons born in Ireland comprised 12, 6 percent of the population but accounted for 60. 4 percent of the almshouse , 36, 7 percent of the workhouse , and 15. 5 percent of prison inmates; Jews from Russia and Austria- Hungary were 3 percent of the population but accounted for none of the almshouse , I percent of the workhouse , and I percent of the prison inmates. 42 Very likely, the present-orientation of the Irish and the future-orientation of the Jews had important indirect effects as well, The Anglo- Saxon Protestant elite , for example , probably discriminated against people who showed little disposition to get ahead and in favor of those who showed much (provided that it was not too much , which would have made them pushing The lower the individual was on the cultural scale , the greater the obstacles in the way of his moving up occupationally or otherwise and the less his motivation to try, At the very bottom of the scale , the desire to rise was altogether lacking and those who reached adulthood in the lower class rarely if ever climbed out of it. Moreover , the obstacles in the way of rising - many of which were due to the distaste future-oriented P.e.ople had for the manners and morals of the extremely present-oriented were all but insuperable. Some

families doubtless remained lower class for many generations, but most probably died out within two or three,

THE IMPERATIVES OF CLASS

- a Each class culture implies - indeed , more or less requires

certain sort of physical environment. It follows that a city (or district within a city) which suits one culture very well is likely to suit another very poorly or not at all.

To an upper- class individual , having a great deal of space at one disposal is important both practically and symbolically; the demand for space, a city planner-economist observes, " seems to be a deeply ingrained cultural value associated not only with such functional needs as play space for children , but also with basic attitudes toward nature , privacy, and the meaning of the family.

"43 Being by oneself

a good deal- and therefore having room enough for privacy essential to the development of a well- defined self; in the middle and upper classes , but not in the working class , it is thought essential that each child have a room of his or her own, The higher a family is on the class-culture scale , the wider the expanse of lawn (or in the case of an apartment house , the thicker the walls) that it wants between it and , the the neighbors. Similarly, the higher the commuter is on the scale more important it is to him to ride to work in solitary splendor. For it is better than the lower-middle- class person a car pool will do , however, finds even that the bus; the upper-middle- class person

distasteful.

In the middle- and upper- class cultures, one s house and grounds 44 To afford opportunities for self- improvement and self-expression, the upper-class individual , it is the latter value that is usually more important: the house is the setting for and the representation of his family line ("house ), The middle- class individual is more likely to value his house for giving scope to his impulse to improve

not only physical things (the house and grounds) but also, and especially, his own and his family s skills, habits , feelings, and attitudes, (The do- it- yourself movement is at least in part an expresexpressing sion of the middle- class taste for mastering skills and " particularly the one s personality, ) The middle- class individualmeans of also regards the house as a one lower-middle- class " helps one rise in improving his social status; having a " good address

things

the worki, In the upper- and middle- class cultures

, the neighborhood

and

community are as important as the house and are hardly to be separated from it. It is essential to live where there are good schools,

THE IMPERATIVES OF CLASS / 71

70 / THE UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED

for otherwise the children might not get into good colleges. Other

community facilities parks, libraries , museums, and the likeare highly valued , as are opportunities to be of " service " by participating in civic organizations. The middle- or upper- class individual

wants to feel that his local government is honest ,

impartial , and

efficient. At the upper end of the scale , especially, he wants a sense of belonging " to it " community that is , of standing in a fellowship relation to his neighbors (even though he may. never see them) and thus of constituting with them a moral entity not unlike the Puritan congregation of visible saints in the seventeenth century. This desire to belong to a community partly accounts for the exclusiveness of the better " neighborhoods and suburbs. The exclusion of all who are not parties to the covenant (in the language of Puritanism) is a precondition of fellowship: a community, after all , consists of people who feel a sense of oneness.

Where the principle of exclusion appears to

be and perhaps is racial or ethnic, the neighbors are likely to see that in the pursuit of one of their values they have infringed upon another. Those who feel most strongly the obligation to be of " service " and to act " responsibly upper-middle and upper- class Jews, especially often resolve the conflict by sponsoring a strenuous community effort to bring a certain number of Negroes (or whatever group is being discriminated against) into the neighborhood. To the working class , a different set of values to accord with its life style governs the choice of physical arrangements in the city. Space is less important to the working- class family than to the middle- or upper- class one. It prefers being " comfy " to having privacy; it is thought natural for children to sleep two or three to a room or perhaps even to a bed. Having neighbors even noisy ones - down the hall or in a house that is adjoining or almost adjoining is taken for granted. The working-class individual has few deep friendships with his neighbors, but he likes knowing who they are and he likes seeing and even hearing their goings-on. (It was because the Italian working-class residents of Boston s West End took this interest in one another that Herbert J. Gans called his account of them

The Urban

From the working- class point of view , middle- and upper- class neighborhoods are dull and lonely. Riding to work by Villagers.

oneself is no fun either; the working- class person prefers a car pool

but does not mind a bus or subway.

When he must choose between more and better community faciliclass ties on the one hand and lower taxes on the other, the workingindividual usually chooses the latter. He will be satisfied if his children graduate from high school, and any school that is not a blackboard jungle will do. Parks and libraries matter to him even less than schools. He has no desire to participate in community improvement projects and no wish to feel himself part of a community, except perhaps an ethnic one. If his neighbors are a mixed lot , some being hardly sane and others less than respectable, that does not concern

him: he is likely to take the attitude that so long as they do not interfere with him, they can do or be what they please. To this last statement an important qualification must be attached. The working- class individual is likely to become ugly and aggressive take if members of an ethnic or racial group that he dislikes begin to " over "

his neighborhood.

He is more apt to be prejudiced

than are

members of the middle class and much less apt to conceal his prejurespon-

dice. There is no talk in working~ class neighborhoods about "

sibility for reducing racial tensioAs. In some areas the movement of factories to the suburban ring has class. led to the building of residential suburbs that are working , but in style of life class ones Physically, these look much like middles house is not a the two differ sharply. The working- class suburbanite , as is often the case with way station on the road to something better the middle class. He is also less likely than is his middle- class counterpart to forgo his favorite TV program in order to collect for the Heart Fund or " serve the community " in some other way. The lower- class individual lives in the slum , which, to a greater or lesser extent , is an expression of his tastes and style of life. The slum, according to the sociologist Marshall B. Clinard, is a way of life with its own subculture. The subcultural norms and values of the slum are reflected in poor sanitation and health practices, deviant behavior,

and often a real lack of interest in formal education. With some exceptions, there is little general desire to engage in personal or

community efforts for self- improvement. Slum persons generally are apathetic toward the employment of self- help on a community basis they are socially isolated, and most sense their powerlessness. This does not mean that they are satisfied with their way of life or do not want a better way to live; it is simply that slum apathy tends to inhibit

- "

72 / THE UN HEAVENLY CITY REVISITED

THE IMPERATIVES OF CLASS / 73

individuals from putting forth sufficient efforts to change the local community. They may protest and they may blame the slum entirely on the outside world , but at the same time they remain apathetic about what they could themselves do to change their world. Although he has more " leisure " than almost anyone , the indifference (" apathy " if one prefers) of the lower- class person is such that he seldom makes even the simplest repairs to the place that he lives in. He is not troubled by dirt and dilapidation and he does not mind the inadequacy of public facilities such as schools, parks, hospitals, and libraries; indeed, where such things exist he may destroy them by carelessness or even by vandalism, Conditions that make the slum repellent to others are serviceable to him in several ways. 48 First the slum is a place of excitement where the action is.

" Nothing

happens there by plan and anything may happen by accident - a

game ,

a fight , a tense confrontation with the

police; feeling that

something exciting is about to happen is highly congenial to people who live for the present and for whom the present is often empty, Second , it is a place of opportunity, Just as some districts of the city are specialized as a market for , say, jewelry or antiques, so the slum is specialized as one for vice and for illicit commodities generally. Dope peddlers , prostitutes , and receivers of stolen goods are all readily available there , within easy reach of each other and of their customers and victims. For " hustlers, " the slum is the natural headquarters. Third , it is a place of concealment. A criminal is less visible to the police in the slum than elsewhere , and the lower- class individual , who in some parts of the city would attract attention , is one among many there. In the slum one can beat one s children, lie drunk in the gutter , or go to jail without attracting any special notice; these are things that most of the neighbors themselves have done and that they consider quite normal. Although it is the lower class that gives the slum its special character , lower- class people are by no means the only ones who live in it. (Still less are they the only ones who live in the " poverty areas " of the largest cities , a fact abundantly evident from the 197 I survey, some findings of which were briefly summarized in Chapter One, ) Some blocks may be occupied almost exclusively by the lower class , but in the district as a whole , the majority of residents may well be

working-class and not a few middle- class. These are people whose

incomes do not correspond to their class culture; in some cases they the death of a breadwinner, for examare the victims of bad luck but more often they are in the slum because racial discriminaple tion , past or present, has deprived them of normal opportunities for education and employment. For these working- and middle- class slum dwellers, life in the slum is a daily battle to preserve life , sanity, and self-respect. They must

where little or nothing is taught or learned and where the children are in constant physical and moral infested halls;

send their children to schools

danger; they must endure garbage-filled alleys and rat-

if they shop in nearby stores, they must pay high prices for poor selections of inferior goods (the prices are often high only for for the lower class, which demands credit even though its them credit rating is very poor, the same prices may actually be low); they must suffer the risk of annoyance and even of serious hardship by being mistaken for members of the lower class by policemen, teachers, landlords, and others, who either cannot discern or do not trouble to look for the clues to class differences among the poor. and even Although the lower- class type finds the slum convenientespecially class individuals congenial , there are many lowerwomen - who are ambivalent about it or who want to escape from it. By exceptional luck or enterprise now and then one does. Claude is an example. Manchild in a Promised Land, Brown, the author of

To the normal people who live in the slum, the worst feature of life

there is fear, Many slum dwellers , Patricia Cayo Sexton writes, "

live

of being robbed, knifed, attacked, in a generalized state of fear bullied, or having their children injured. This fear colors their whole lives: their ability to learn, to work, to stay sane and healthy, to venture out of their apartments or block, to live openly and freely, to be friends with their neighbors, to trust the world , outsiders, themselves. "49

Within the limits set by the logic of growth , the mix of cultures more than anything else determines the city s character and citythe nature of its problems, Almost everything about the class

population density, per capita income, the nature and quality of

THE IMPERATIVES OF CLASS

74 / THE UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED

housing, the crime rate , the dropout rate , the level of public services the tenor of race relations , the style of politics depends in some way and to some extent upon the class composition of the population, When this changes , either in a neighborhood or in the city as a whole almost everything else changes accordingly, And except as they are

compatible with the realities of class culture in the city, the most

carefully contrived efforts of public and private policymakers cannot succeed , for the mix of class cultures is a constraint as real as those of income , technology, or climate. It is necessary, therefore , to form the best estimate one can of the direction that change in the class system

will take,

For at least a century there has been a general movement upward on the class scale from every class except possibly (a question that will

be considered in Chapter Ten) the lowest. A century ago the urban population was heavily working class; now it is heavily middle class. The process of " middle- class- ification " as Dollard called it, is undoubtedly continuing at an accelerating rate and will in a

few

decades have reduced the working class to a very small proportion of

the whole population. The upper middle class has meanwhile been increasing rapidly in its relative strength , especially since the Second World War. Eventually, the distribution of population along the class scale may be decidedly bimodal , the largest concentration being in the upper middle class and the next largest (much smaller than the first) in

the lower class. No hard data bear on these predictions. Census data on education income , and occupation cannot be made to yield more than very approximate measures of the size of classes as defined here. 50 There are , however , many indirect indicators that are to some extent relevant. One can see evidence of the effects of the process of " middleclass- ification " in changes that have occurred in the occupational

structure (at the turn of the century one in six persons in the work force was a white collar worker; in 1950, one in three , now , one in two); in the decline of the saloon, the poolhall , and the brothel , and the rise of the family television set (the 1880 Census counted 517

brothels in Philadelphia , and Jane Addams complained at about the same time that in some wards of Chicago , there was one saloon to every twenty-eight voters); 51 in the ever- greater sensitivity of the

policemenpublic to brutality such as the beating of suspects by and wife and child beating commonplace even half a century ago house it was taken for

If screams resounded through a tenement52 in the growing granted that the child deserved all it got and more fear of violent crime on the part of people whose danger from it is less than ever; in the unconcern of the same people about victimless crime " and of vice; in the and their acceptance of " the sexual revolution , and legalization of abortion, the illegalization of capital punishment the growing unwillingness to inflict severe penalties on those who commit serious crimes; in the greater concern for individual rights (of , juveracial minorities, women, person accused of crimes, the insane in niles, political extremists , homosexuals, and deviants in general); , and increased distress at inequalities of wealth, schooling, health care citipolitical power (this last as evidenced by efforts to encourage " based on personal zens ' participation ); in the decline of a politics

and local attachments (the national issues and evidence of personalities (and accordingly the compulsion to find

material inducements and on ethnic machine ) and the growth of one based on

national moral imperfections); and in the growth of a mass audience for serious literature, music, and art (readers, listeners, and viewers are counted now by the millions, whereas a generation or two ago they were counted by the thousands), The mass movement from the working into the middle class and from the lower middle into the upper middle class accounts as much as anything for the general elevation of standards that, as was conto be tended in Chapter One , makes most urban problems appear they are getting worse even when,

measured by a fixed standard,

class. It is

getting better. The new standards are those "ofhas a higher given great nummiddle- class- ification

because the process of " bers of people higher perspectives and standards that dissatisfaction with the city is so widespread. The city that was thought pleasant when most people were working class is thought repellent now that most are middle class, and it will be thought abhorrent when, before long, most are upper middle class. classes has

The ascendancy

of the middle and upper middle

" (that is, discrepancies increased feelings of guilt at " social failures between actual performance and what by the rising class standards is

76 / THE UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED

deemed adequate) and given rise to public rhetoric about " accepting responsibility " for ills that in some cases could not have been prevented and cannot be cured, The dropout , for example, in turning his back on education " is telling us that we never really connected with him, that in our preoccupation with others we never gave him enough time or attention, " 53 This is typical. In the upper-middle- class view it is always society that is to blame, Society, according to this view could solve all problems if it only tried hard enough; that a problem continues to exist is therefore proof positive of its guilt. In this tendency to find society responsible for all ills, including those that are a function of rising standards, two dangers appear. One is that the allegation of social guilt may lead the individual to believe that he can do nothing to help himself, The dropout , for example , may, feel himself excused from all effort once it has been established that he was never given enough time or attention, just as the juvenile delinquent may excuse himself when it has been established that he is the product of wrong social conditions, The other danger is that many people will take the talk of social guilt seriously and conclude that the \ society is one for

CHAPTER FOUR Race:

Thinking

May Make It

, , , Being from America made me intensely sensitive to matters of color. I saw that people who looked alike drew together and

most of the time stayed together. This was entirely voluntary; there being no other reason for it. But Africans were with Africans. Pakistanis were with Pakistanis, And so on, I tucked it into my mind that when I returned home I would tell Americans this observation; that where true brotherhood existed among all colors, where no one felt segregated, where there then was " complex no " superiority " complex, no " inferiority

voluntarily, naturally, people of the same kind felt drawn together by that which they had in common,

Malcolm X

which they can have no respect and in which they

can place no trust. Such condemnation is mainly to be expected in

those sections of society the upper classes, especially their youth that are most alive to moral issues, and in those other sectors

HE most c?nspicuous fact of life in the

c~ty is racial division, A

that have

hundred times a day there are confrontations between black and

obvious grounds for thinking themselves victims of social injustice, To the rhetoricians, the guilty society will be " not worth saving, " To those who have known all along that it is society s fault that they are at the bottom of the heap, the case will be that much clearer and their

into white , and almost every day an explosion turns part of some cityoften a battleground, The residential suburbs are mostly white lily-white ; the central cities, especially their older, more deterio-

notably the poor and the minority groups

righteous anger that much hotter,

rated parts, and above all their slums, are predominantly or entirely black, Many observers see little reason to hope for improvement, The city, they say, has always exploited, humiliated, and degraded its immigrant groups, But whereas all the others eventually have been able to escape their oppressors by joining them, the Negro, marked as he is by skin color, can never do so, For him, in "this view, the cityB, is writes Kenneth degradation without hope, " The dark ghettoes, above all ecoClark, " are

social, political , educational , and

nomic colonies, Their inhabitants are subject peoples, victims of the greed, cruelty, insensitivity, guilt, and fear of their masters, The view to be developed here is altogether different from this one,

RACE: THINKING MAY MAKE IT so / 79

78 / THE UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED

The existence of racial prejudice is a fact too painfully evident to require assertion, There is no denying, however, that

as it still is

widespread

racial prejudice today is of a different order of

magnitude than it was prior to the Second War; the change of atti-

tudes in the last two decades

alone has been so widespread and

profound as to make meaningless comparisons between the two periods, Moreover , as Thomas Sowell has emphasized, the advancement of ethnic groups in this country, far from depending upon the absence of prejudice and discrimination, has been most rapid when opposition was strongest: " periods of advancement have coincided with increasing group animosity, "2

Discrimination was not the

main

obstacle in

the way of the Irish , the Italians , the Jews, and other minorities that have " made it, " Nor is it the main one ofthe Negro not to mention the Puerto Rican and the Mexican today, The other minority groups once lived in the oldest parts of the inner city - and the Negro lives in them now not so much because they were looked down on (although, of course , they were) as because they had low incomes, It was because they were poor that they had to come to the city, and being poor they could not afford good housing on the outskirts of the city or in the suburbs , nor could they afford to commute to the factories , stores , and offices where they worked, Similarly, the neighborhoods in which the other groups lived were often squalid and vicious as the Negro slum is now not because they were subject , victimized and degraded by the city (although there was an people element of that, too), but because every wave of migration , whether from rural America or abroad, brought with it some who were , or , soon became , lower class, Today the Negro' main disadvantage is the same as the Puerto Rican s and Mexican s: namely, that he is the most recent unskilled and hence relatively low- income , migrant to reach the city fwm

backward rural area, The city is not the end of his journey but the start of it. He came to it not because he was lured by a cruel and greedy master but because he was attracted by job, housing, school

and other opportunities that , bad as they were , were nevertheless better by far than any he...b,ad known before, Like earlier immigrants the NegrO has reason to expect that his children will have increases of opportunity even greater than his, 3 If he lives in a neighborhood that

is all-

black, the reason is not white prejudice simply, and in some

instances it may not be that at all. This physical separation may arise

his having a low income, his from any or all of various causes wave of migration that inundated all of the cheap being part of a

housing then available (had more been available, more migrants might well have come to take it), his having class-cultural characteristics that make him an undesirable neighbor , his inclination to live among his own kind, That physically distinguishing racial characteristics do not necessarily stand in the way of acceptance and upward mobility is evident from the example of Orientals, The median family in€ome of urban Japanese-Americans in 1969 ($ 12 794) was considerably higher than that of urban whites ($ 11, 203) and their unemployment rate (2, I percent) was considerably lower (4, 7 percent),

The same was true , although not in the same degree , of ChineseAmericans, The misfortune , amounting to a tragedy, is not that Negroes got to the city but that they got there so late and then in such great numbers

in so short a time, Although in the 1830 S

the great majority of

Negroes living in cities were extremely poor (as of course were many whites as well) there were substantial numbers of Negro craftsmen and professionals, Instead of growing in size and influence after the Civil War, these middle- class Negro communities shrank, They were handicapped by the unending flow of poor and backward immigrants , from the rural South, but it was the growth and spread of racial hostility that, by depriving the skilled of the opportunity to use their

skills, all but destroyed the middle class, The flood of European

immigration followed shortly by the Great Depression left the mass of 5 Had these forces over which the Negroes with worsening prospects,

had he been allowed to enter Negro had no control not existed urban labor markets and to compete on equal terms with whites from there is no reason to suppose that he the end of the Civil War on

would not have long since been fully assimilated into the working, middle , and upper classes, The slums of the cities today would not be black and their suburbs white, What is more important, problems that are essentially economic or class-cultural would not be so easily misperceived as essentially racial.

Almost everything said about the problems of the Negro tends to

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$7, 070

White income

060 520

540 830

170

430

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level siblings

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Negro l/1come

Unex-

plained

Occupational prestige level

Educational

Number of

0, D, Duncan, " Inheritance

standing Poverty

aSollrce:

On Underof Poverty or Inheritance of Race " in Daniel p, Moynihan, ed" (New York, Basic Books, 1969, pp, 85- 110), Family background is occupation and education of head of family as a child, The amounts accounted for by each variable are after the effects of the variables to the left of it are accounted for. The estimates were obtained by successive regression equations for whites, then substituting in each equation the values of the relevant variables held by average Negroes; for example, the number 940 is obtained by use of a regression equation including only family background, whereas the 70 obtained for number of siblings uses a regression equation that includes family background as well as number of siblings, (New York: Wiley- Interscience , 197 I), p, 46, Resources for Social Change Reprinted from James S, Coleman,

940

Family background

DIFFERENCES IN AVERAGE INCOME LEVELS FOR NEGROES AND WHITES AND THE AMOUNTS OF THESE INCOME DIFFERENCES ATTRIBUTABLE TO SUCCESSIVELY CHANGING LEVEL OF INDICATED V ARIABLES

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Decrement

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RACE: THINKING MAY MAKE IT so

THE UN HEAVENLY CITY REVISITED

82

that $940 of the difference is attributable to differences

in " family

background" (that is, when whites and Negroes alike in this respect were compared that much of the income difference disappeared); controlling for " number of siblings " reduced the difference by another $70, for " educational level" by still another $520 , and for occupational prestige level" by yet another $830, (These four variables were not nonracial in an

historical

sense ,

of course: racial

injustice in the past may explain all of the Negro s disadvantage in presently say, a " family background, " But the object is to measure operating factors that cause income differences), If one assumes that the four variables treated by Duncan are the most implausibly nonracial ones of importance , then the " unexplained" residue only ($ 1

430) represents the effect of racial factors , presumably discrimina-

tion, The difference in average income between the Comparable Negro and white is then $ 1 430 as against $3, 790

for the Census

Negro and white.

The Census Negro has a birthrate about one- third higher than does

the white, If, however , in both groups women who have lived on Southern farms are left out of account , the Negro birthrate does not differ significantly from that of the white, If, in addition , in both groups women with less than a high school education are omitted, the Negro rate is actually a little lower than the white, The school dropout rate among Census Negro adolescents is almost twice that among whites, But when the occupation of parents is controlled for , this difference is much reduced, and with children of white-collar parents it almost disappears, 9 When many factors (sex family status, family income , wage and employment conditions in the metropolitan area , and residence in a poverty tract) are controlled for the effect of race on the amount of time spent in school by youths is

too small to be statistically significant,1o Unemployment rates are persistently higher for Census Negroes than for whites, About half the differential in rates is to be accounted

for by differences between the two groups in their distribution by occupation, education , age , and region , however, These differences are largely the result of hi~!orical discrimination , of course , but the present discrimination by employers on the basis of color fact is that accounts for much less unemployment than the gross figures would

suggest,11 One important factor behind unemployment differentials is

place of residence: boys and girls who live in districts where there is a relative surplus of unskilled workers are at a manifest disadvantage whatever their color. Occupation and incomebusinesses of parents or are"other know factors: boys and girls whose parents own people " have an advantage in finding jobs, Class culture is still another factor: lower-class youths are less likely than others to look for jobs, and the lower their class culture the less acceptable they are , someto employers, Even after correcting for everything possible , especially job thing is left that must be explained on racial grounds , white prejudiscrimination, Still, considering all these other factors dice and any specifically Negro characteristics account for much less of the difference in employment rates than would otherwise appear, The Census Negro spends as much as a third more for housing ,than the

level but , in Chicago at least Comparable Negro has been found to pay about the same rent and

do whites at a given income

live at about the same density as the white, Discrimination in housing, in the opinion of Richard Muth, does not contribute "12 to the poverty of the Negro " to any practically significant extent. households without a father

The proportion of Negro children in present is very high, Whether it is higher than among whites of the not same income , education, rural-urban origin, and class culture isFirst

clear , however. An investigation conducted just before the World War in the then predominantly Irish Middle West Side of New York found that about half the families there were fatherless.'3 Sexual promiscuity in the Negro slum is notorious, This is in part a class characteristic, however, In another report on the predominantly the Irish Middle West Side of half a century ago, mention is made of " " where " boys as hopelessly unmoral attitude of the neighborhood, "14 , young as seven and eight actually practice sodomy, The arrest rates of Census Negroes are very much higher than those ' and income are taken into

of whites, but when such factors as age account the difference is reduced but apparently by no means eliminated, Although the evidence is conflicting, there is reason to believe disproportionate share of that the Comparable Negro commits a

most types of crimes.'5 is in all respects less injured (or That the Comparable Negro

RACE: THINKING MAY MAKE IT so / 85

84 / THE UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED

otherwise affected) by currently operating racial factors than is the Census Negro does not mean that these factors are of little or no importance. It is all too obvious that racial prejudice enters into every sphere of life, Cultural differences (apart from class-cultural differalso and conceivably even biological ones as well ences) account in some degree for the special position of the Negro, as they do for that of every ethnic group, 16 If there is something about Jewish culture that makes the Jew tend to be upwardly mobile , there may be something about Negro culture that makes the Negro tend not to be, Strangely (considering the great number of sociologists and social anthropologists produced by American universities in the last two or three decades and considering the interest of the subject), very

little is known about the personality and culture of the Negro or of other racial and ethnic groups in the cityP Eventually, systematic study may reveal deep cultural differences among ethnic groups, It is very unlikely, however, that any differences in racial (or ethnic) culture will have as much explanatory importance for the matters under discussion here as do differences in income , education and class culture,

Under favorable conditions Negroes can be expected to close the gap between their levels of welfare and those of whites much faster than most people would probably imagine. This is strongly suggested by the experience of the last decade or so, a period which although more favorable to Negro progress than earlier ones was, of course , far

from optimal. Looking at the rates of white and nonwhite progress in certain aspects of life in the years 1960 to 1968, Michael J. Flax of the Urban Institute has tried to answer the question: If these rates were to remain constant, when , if at all , would nonwhites reach the level whites had attained in 1968? Here are some of his findings: 18 The figures are not predictions , of course , and it is highly unlikely that the rates of change for both races will remain constant. They are nevertheless suggestive of the possibilities. Without any doubt, blacks would make faster progress in overtaking whites if it were not for the racial discrimination to which , albeit in gradually lesser degree; ' they are still subject. (Working from

Year white 1968 levels Indicator of welfare

% men (age 25-29) completing high school % families with incomes over $8, 000

% in clerical occupations Median family income % in professional and technical occupations Fertility rates

% unemployed % completing at least four years of college % housing that is substandard % teenagers unemployed % persons below poverty level

Infant mortality Life expectancy at 35 years % female- headed households % illegitimate births % children living with two parents

might be reached 1973 1974 1974 1978 1978 1979 1982 1987 1988 1989 1992 1994

2019 never never never

1960 Census data , Barry R, Chiswick found support for his hypoth-

esis that white male workers act as if they have a " taste working with blacks to overcome which employers pay them what is in effect a bonus when they do work with blacks; the amount of " for not

this. bonus, he estimates, increases average white income inequality

workers did not by 2, 3 percent over what it would be if the white have this " taste, "19) Insofar as it is discrimination that prevents Negroes from having the same distribution as whites among the major occupational categories and, when they are in the same occupations from receiving equal pay, that, far more than unemployment, accounts for their lower incomes, however, the

Even in the complete absence of discrimination,

situation of most Negroes would not be changed very dramatically or at once, One can see this if one asks how matters would change if

overnight all Negroes turned white (or , if one prefers, all whites turned black), thus making discrimination on racial grounds physi-

86

RACE: THINKING MAY MAKE IT so

THE UNHEA VENL Y CITY REVISITED

cally impossible, If this were to happen , most of the New Whites would continue working at the same jobs , living in the same neighborhoods , and sending their children to the same schools for at least a decade or two,

more children and a lower income, the poor New White

per child

tage would be compounded: that is, the amount of capital

There would be no sudden, mass exodus from the neighbor-

hoods - many of them blighted and some of them slum

abovethe same as in 1967 (3, 64), and considerably more than in 95) in 197 I. Having 32) and white ones (2, the- line black families (2, s disadvan-

in which

most Negroes now live, For some time to come New Whites would constitute the largest part of the low- income group and would therefore occupy a large share of the cheapest housing, which is to say the oldest, most run- down housing in the highest- density districts of the inner city, After a few years many would be living on the same blocks with Old Whites ofthe same (low) income level as themselves, but this change would be of slight importance , since the neighborhoods would be about as poor as before, In the very worst sections, New Whites would be an overwhelming majority for a long time to come , the reason being that Negroes constitute most of the poorest of the poor. Stores, schools , churches, and other community institutions and facilities there would still be segregated, For example , New White children

that he would invest in its education and training would be relatively small.

indig~

Finally, it must be said that many New Whites would suffer nities and humiliations not so different from those to which the Negro class white receives is in now is subject, The treatment that the lower-

and a larger

many ways like that of the victim of racial prejudice proportion of New Whites would be lower class. In one respect their their former (racial) new (class) status might be harder to bear than , however one; for the victim of race prejudice can take some comfort small , in the knowledge that he is being treated unjustly,

Much of what appears (especially to Negroes) as race prejudice is prejudice or , at any rate, class antipathy, Similarly, much class " behavior is really of what appears (especially to whites) as " Negro

really

would go to school only with New White children , and the slum school

lower- class behavior. The lower class is relatively large among

would remain a slum school.

Negroes; it appears even larger than it is to those whites who fail to lack of skill , low distinguish a Negro who exhibits outward signs which in a white would mark him income , slum housing, and so on , or even as lower class, from one whose culture is working, middle upper class but whose opportunities have been limited by discrimina-

With the end of racial discrimination, some New Whites would quickly climb the job and income ladder and then leave the slums and blighted areas, Unfortunately, however , the end of racial discrimination would not very greatly improve the job situation of most New Whites, Those who , because of discrimination in the past or for other reasons, were unskilled would still be at a disadvantage. As for the

tion and whose income is low.

How much outward resemblance there is between class antipathy ' accounts of the

well- trained, most of them would gain by the end of discrimination

and racial prejudice may be seen from sociologists

but some would lose by it. At present , most Negro professionals and politicians (the latter meaning all who act in representative capacities

treatment often accorded to the white lower class. A, B, Hollingshead, the social structure of a Elmtown s Youth for example , describes in , the population of which in 1940 typical" Midwestern county seat was white (there was only one Negro family) and consisted mostly of native- born Protestants, many descended from " old American stock. In this all- American community, nearly a quarter of the population are excluded had the status of pariahs, Class V (lower-class) families " from the two leading residential areas, . . , Employers do not like to hire them unless labor is scarce or they can be induced to work for low wages, , , , CJass V persons are almost totally isolated from organized

qua Negroes) have an advantage in not having to compete with whites; of the middle-class

Negroes who do compete with whites some receive a premium for being black, By putting them into competition with Old Whites, the end of racial discrimination would , in the short run at least, hurt perhaps as many New Whites as it would help. One circumstance that would tend to hold the New White back in

many cases is the size of fiis family. The mean number of children in below- the- poverty- line black families in 1971 was 3, 24, almost

RACE: THINKING MAY MAKE IT so / 89

88 / THE UNHEAVENL Y CITY REVISITED

community activities, , , , They knew that their children were discriminated against in the school system by both the teachers and the pupils, , , , The Class V' s get the bad jobs , such as helping in the junk yards and hauling garbage and ashes, , , . Class V persons give the

fourth of all births are illegitimate, , , , The mean lnumber of children! is 6 per mother. , , , Disagreements leading to quarrels and vicious fights, followed by desertion by either the man or the woman, possibly divorce, is

impression of being resigned to a life of frustration and defeat in a community that despises them for their disregard of morals, lack of

mother more often than on the father when the family is broken, ,s, have , Before left the sixteenth birthday is reached, , ' 75 percent of the class V'

success ' goals , and dire poverty, Hollingshead summarizes the community s view of the lower class the scum of the city as follows:

school. , , , 2:3

"21

They have no respect for the law , or themselves,

They enjoy their shacks and huts along the river or across the tracks and love their dirty, smoky, low- class dives and taverns, Whole families children, in- laws, mistresses, and live in one shack, This is the crime class that produces the delinquency and sexual promiscuity that fills the paper. Their interests lie in sex and its perversion, The girls are always preg-

all-

nant; the families are huge; incestual relations occur frequently,

They are not inspired by education, and only a few are able to make any attainments along this line,

They are loud in their speech , vulgar in their actions, sloppy in their dress, and indifferent toward their plight. Their vocabulary develops as profanity is learned, If they work, they work at very menial jobs. Their life experiences are purely physical , and even these are on a low plane, . They have no interest in health and medical care, The men are too lazy to work or do odd jobs around town, They support the Democratic party because of the relief obtained during the depression, This group lives for a Saturday of drinking or fighting, , , ,

not unusual. , , , The burden of child care , as well as support, falls on the

If something like one- quarter of the population of a typical Mid-

western town is (more or less correctly) perceived in this way, it should not be surprising that a sizable part of the population of a large city is perceived (also more or less correctly) in the same way, Racial and ethnic prejudice obviously do not account for the low status of so

many Elmtown people, Why, then, should the same attributed to racial prejudice

attitudes be

when the Class V' s are Negroes (or

, Protes-

born Americans?

Puerto Ricans or Mexicans or whatever) rather than white

tant , nativeObviously, racial prejudice is manifested when, as often happens the Negro is automatically regarded as lower class simply on the basis of his skin color or when he is treated as if he were lower class even class Negro though it is clear that he is not. But to treat the lower- , to show , on the face of it exactly like the lower- class white is not racial prejudice, Although, in principle , it is easy to distinguish racial prejudice from class prejudice as well as prejudice (" an irrational attitude of hostility on the basis of supposed characteristics," according to the dictionary) from justifiable antipathy (a rational attitude of hostility on the basis of objective characteristics), in practice to do so would s, Concretely; racial usually require a wisdom greater than Solomon

and class prejudice are usually inextricably mixed, and so are preju-

s view of the lower class is not, apparently, based entirely on prejudice, Class V parents, Hollingshead says, are " indif-

dice and justifiable antipathy, Consider the following:

ferent to the future

A Negro drifter not long ago was arrested for breaking into a liquor store and swiping a bottle. He smashed the neck, took a swig and was caught with

The community

They will leave a job casually, often without notice, , , 8 percent of the mothers and 46 percent of'1'he fathers had been convicted once or more in the local courts. Serial monogamy is the rule, , , one- fifth to one-

the goods, so to speak inside him, Two policemen carted him off to the station house for booking, He was a moderately difficult prisoner, swaying around as they tried to fingerprint him, But he had joshed them into a good

,,

-,----

RACE: THINKING MAY MAKE IT so 90

THE UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED

mood and all three were making something of a joke about the fingerprinting, The Negro then shoved a bit , saying " mon you ers, The cops immediately turned upon him and beat him up, The word he had used is not a word to which lower-middle- class Irishmen or Italians take kindly- even in jest , and especially from a Negro (although that particular epithet is a common- place of lower-class Negro speech),

ITL--J f_

In a case like this, it is impossible to say what part was played by racial prejudice. " Negroes may be convinced that the drifter would not have been beaten if he had been white. On the other hand , readers Elmtown s Youth of may conclude that a white , Protestant oldstock American " of Class V would have gotten exactly the same treatment,

borhood would be called segregated even if every family in it had recently turned down an excellent opportunity to live among whites; it is " unevenness in the distribution of white and Negro households

within a neighborhood, whatever the motive or cause of the unevenness, that constitutes segregation for the sociologistP The lay reader , supposes that unaware that the word is used in a Pickwickian sense the " ghetto " studied by such sociologists and described in the news, partly or may papers must be the result of white prejudice. That it wholly, the result of circumstances (namely, that large numbers of the inner city and

unskilled Negro workers came all at once to occupied all the low-cost housing then available) or of the Negroes , hearing incesown preference is not likely to occur to him, Negroes segregated" and that they live in " ghettoes " are santly that they are "

given additional grounds for supposing Obstacles of many kinds , some insuperable , are phiced in the way of Negroes who want to move into white neighborhoods. This fact however , does not adequately explain the existence of neighborhoods that are wholly or almost wholly black, In many inner-city areas Negroes now constitute the main body of low-skilled , low- paid labor; this in itself would account for their being the main body of residents in the poorer parts of the city. No doubt , also , many Negroes prefer black neighborhoods and would live in them even if their opportunities to live in white ones were excellent (which , to repeat , they generally are not). The evidence of recent public opinion polls on this is somewhat contradictory, One large survey found that 85 percent of the black respondents either preferred neighborhoods that were about one- half Negro or said that the composition of the neighborhood made no difference to them (only 1 percent wanted to live in predominantly white neighborhoods). 25

Another , made in 1967 among

Negroes living in the North and the West , found that almost twothirds preferred neighborhoods that were mostly or entirely Negro.

Whatever their preferences with respect to the racial composition of the neighborhood , the adequacy of the housing, the survey makers write , is of more concern to Negroes , as it is to whites. The practice of calling all Negro neighborhoods " segregated" and ghettoes " misrepresents th;situation seriously and perhaps dangerously. In the technical language of many sociologists , a Negro neigh-

that they are in all cases

perhaps often - do

forced" to do what they would sometimes , but it their own accord as a matter of course, One can only conjecture " and ghetto

seems plausible that the universal practice of using " Negro neighborhood tends to segregated" in reference to any

28

which is usually a half- truth at most condition Negroes to the idea housing and that white prejudice " forces " them to live in poor among other Negroes. If this is so, the semantic confusion goes a long way toward making bad matters worse, There would be residential segregation in the city even if there were no Negroes in it. Class prejudice (or, more generally, differences of taste associated with class cultures) would give rise to some of it. In

the Chicago metropolitan area , Anthony H, households with 19~9 incomes between $2,

Pascal found, white

000 and $4, 000 were not

distributed among other whites in the way that one would

expect

judging from housing characteristics alone: unevenness of distri29 In this the New York metropolibution he attributed to class prejudice. tan area, Nathan Kantrowitz constructed indexes of segregation in and Puerto Ricans.

1960 for eleven ethnic groups plus Negroes Segregation as between whites of southern and northern European origins was such, he found, that slightly more than half of the popula-

tion of southern European origin would have to be redistributed in order to achieve full integration with the population of northern these two populations of European within European origin. Even

,"

RACE: THINKING MAY MAKE IT so / 93

92 / THE UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED

origin there was residential segregation: the index between Norwegians and Swedes , for example , was 45-4, It is also possible for a neighborhood to become almost completely segregated even if none of its residents favors segregation, This could happen , Thomas C, Schelling has shown, if people have a

31

moderate urge " to avoid neighborhoods in which they would be

members of a small minority. Obviously it makes a world of difference from a moral and therefore a policy standpoint whether in a concrete case segregation

voluntary or involuntary and what motives (if any!) lie behind it. These are matters about which it is usually extremely difficult , and sometimes quite impossible , to reach reliable judgments in particular

circumstances. Do the Norwegians

live apart from the Swedes

Swedes? What exactly, is the mixture of motives on both sides? And at what precise

because they

like

Norwegians or because they

dislike

point do the constraints upon a Swede become such as to make his living apart from Norwegians " involuntary One of the few studies to shed light on why Negroes live apart from whites was published in 1964 by a team of researchers from Brandeis University, 32 They made the study for the Boston Urban Renewal Administration , which wanted to know how many of the families in the Washington Park neighborhood - a middle- income " ghetto

were likely to remain there if the neighborhood was rehabilitated.

When interviewers first talked to the families , they assumed that most of them would want to move to predominantly white neighborhoods, There was nothing to stop them from doing so, The renewal agency

had given them lists of housing that they might rent or purchase in white neighborhoods at prices they could afford. Moreover , most of them were very dissatisfied where they were; they strongly criticized the neighborhood schools and they complained also of inadequate shopping facilities , insufficient police protection , and noise and disorder in the streets. Since they could easily leave the " ghetto " it was reasonable to expect them to do so. In fact , only thirty- three of the families ( 13 percent) did leave , and of these only nine left the Negro community, A large majority of the families did not even look atthe housing listed as available, Some did not look at it because they were sure that they would be turned down

on one pretext or another if they decided that they wanted it, but most inspected the were just not

interested. (Incidentally, the few who

listed housing encountered no prejudice. The main reason why the Washington Park people did not move,

the researchers finally concluded, was that they had good housing at bargain prices where they were. They were paying a median rent of $85 per month, which was only 12

percent of their income, The 125

carrying charges on a house in the suburbs would be between $ - two- thirds and $ 150. Most of the families could afford this much but they preferred to use their of them had incomes of over $7, 800 One might describe money for other things, As the researchers put it , of housing. "33 them as having been ' spoiled' by their current low costs

In this respect the Negroes were just like the Italians in the Westwere End People

of Boston whom Gans had studied a few years before. " " Gans found, " that their whole mode of

so used to paying low rents,

"34 life was adjusted to them. Any apartment that rented for more than $50 for five or six rooms was thought to be outrageously expensive, Another reason why most of the Washington Park people chose not to move was that they wanted to be near friends and relatives. This

also was a motive of Gans s Italians; indeed, it was what made them urban villagers,

In a more recent study families were asked what were the chief

advantages that caused them to move to their present homes. Whites and blacks gave pretty much the same answers, and this whether they had moved into segregated or integrated neighborhoods, The four were: convenience to work, most important advantages listed appropriateness of the size of the dwelling, certain special features of the dwelling (such as a garage, fencing, or architectural style), and financial gains. Behind the reasons people give when they are asked such questions there are doubtless unconscious motives that are also of importance. Without being aware of what they are doing, the members of an ethnic themselves as a or racial group may impose physical separation on means of maintaining their collective identity and values. As Ralph Ellison has explained: . , , , it is a misunderstanding to assume that Negroes want to break out of Harlem, They want to transform the Harlems oftheir country, These places

RACE: THINKING MAY MAKE IT so / 95

94 / THE UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED

are precious to them, These places are where they have dreamed, where they have lived, where they have loved, where they have worked out life as they could, , , , it isn t the desire to run to the suburbs or to invade " white neighborhoods that is the main concern with my people in Harlem, They would just like to have a more human life there, A slum like Harlem isn just a place of decay, It is also a form of historical and social memory,

Even if more " segregation " is voluntary than most people realize not voluntary, There are many neighborhoods into which it is all but impossible for a black family to move and many more in which blacks are , to put it mildly, unwelcome, By no means all of this hostility represents racial prejudice however, Some of it is simply snobbery (it is safe to say that, if the the fact remains that a great deal is

Washington Park Negroes had been blue-collar rather than whitecollar , the white neighborhoods would have been less open to them), and some of it is the more or less justifiable distaste and fear that working- and middle-class people feel toward lower- class ones, (If a Negro is assumed to be lower class simply because he is black and not

because of anything he does ,

that , of course , is prejudice pure and

simple, ) This distaste and fear is probably as common among Negroes as among whites: the lower-class Negro is usually as unwelcome in or near a middle-class Negro neighborhood as in or near a middle-class white one, Still, even when these motives are added to voluntary segregation " there is no doubt that much segregation based on race prejudice remains, As the Washington Park case shows , it is not the absence of white faces that makes the " ghetto " objectionable to the Negro, Rather, it is the feeling that he is not perfectly free to live wherever he pleases and also , the inadequacy of the stores, schools, playgrounds, and other facilities of his neighborhood, Once it is established, as in Washington Park, that he can live in a white neighborhood if he wishes , and once the facilities of the neighborhood are brought up to a standard of

adequacy, the Negro very often prefers to live among other Negroes, Like everyone else , too, he prefers to live among people whose class culture is not very different from his own, From the standpoint of those who live in it the .-i' ghetto " is not so much that many of its residents are poor as that a relatively small number of them are lower

absence of super-

class, The poverty of the many accounts for the markets (these depend upon rapid turnover of goods tostores, break even) But it and for the generally low quality of the goods in the

accounts for blackis the style of life of the small lower class that infested alleys , and board jungle schools, garbage-strewn and ratdisorderly and dangerous streets, The middle- and upper-working- class Negro, then, if he is to be anywhere near his friends and relatives and in a community to which he feels he " belongs, " must live among people whose style of life he finds repugnant. His situation differs fundamentally from that of, say,

the Italian described by Gans in that the Italian belongs to a group that is predominantly working and lower middle class, The middleclass Italian can live in comfort and without annoyance or embarrassthe Italian ment in the midst of an all-Italian neighborhood because , the middle- class lower class is too small to be noticeable, By contrast Negro who lives in an all-Negro district can rarely avoid contact with the slum, The choice open to him is painful: he may move to a white neighborhood, paying more for housing than he is used to, cutting

himself off from relatives and friends, and risking insult and even suffer the inconveinjury from prejudiced neighbors; or he may near a slum, The niences, annoyances, and hazards of living in or working-class Negro who lives in a housing project has a, problem that he must find

is no less awkward; as Gerald D, Suttles has pointed out out which of his neighbors are dangerous and which are not andnorhe housing

must do so in the absence of the cues that nonproject mally provides,

Such problems do not exist either for the lower-

class Negro, who class

typically feels very much at home in the slum, or for the upperliving in an expensive one , who can insulate himself from it by apartment house ,

working and shopping downtown, and sending his

children to private

schools, The problem is acute, however, for

middle- and upper-working- class

people whose incomes and work

routines do not permit much insulation, and who are often distressed psychologically if not physicallyat the possibility of slipping into a state from which they have only recently managed to emerge, s call This thought , one suspects, is what lies behind Kenneth B, Clark' for a struggle " to prevent decadence from winning over the remaining

""

96

- "

THE UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED

islands of middle class society, "38

His rhetoric has to do entirely with

the hatefulness, callousness ,

and brutality of whites, but what he seems to mean by " decadence " is lower- class culture, The " dark

ghetto " is, in the last analysis , the lower- class one, The movement of the Negro up the class scale appears as inexorable as that of all other groups. The number of middle- and upper- class Negroes is in many areas already large enough to allow the formation

of predominantly middle- and upper- class neighborhoods and suburbs places large enough to support stores, churches , restaurants, and local public services of the sort that middle- and upper- class people desire, Between 1951 and 1971 the percentage of Negro families earning more than $ 10 000 jumped from 3 to 30 (the figures are in constant 1971 dollars), which means that the time has come when many Negroes who find the slum intolerable can leave it without at the same time having to leave the society of other Negroes, Differentiation along income and class lines is occurring within the Negro areas of the large cities, It tends to follow the normal pattern, people settling farther from the city center the higher their income, A

more or less conflicting tendency is also at work, however: neighborhoods that are relatively new (in terms of the length of time that they have been occupied by Negroes) being preferred by upper-status families to those that are relatively old, The consequence of this is (one investigator has reported) that high- prestige Negro neighborhoods are frequently located as close to the city center as are lowprestige ones,

The " upgrading" of some neighborhoods will often mean the downgrading " of others, As more and more Negroes withdraw into middle- and upper-class communities , the concentration of the lower class in the slum will necessarily increase, Very probably the " worsening " of the slum will be seen not as a consequence of the improved position of Negroes generally, but rather as further evidence of callousness and neglect by the " white power structure, We haveabsen-

tee leadership, absentee ministers , absentee merchants " a resident of Watts complained after the riot there, 4O Apparently, he thought that this was a problem that som~ne presumably the governmentshould do something about. The increasing isolation of the lower class is a problem , to be sure , but it is hard to see what can be done

RACE: THINKING MAY MAKE IT SO

about it. The upper classes will continue to want to separate themselves physically from the lower, and in a free country they probably cannot be prevented from doing so, Whatever their origin, " writes sociologist Urie Bronfenbrenner, the most immediate, overwhelming, and stubborn obstacles to achieving quality and equality in education now lie as much in the character and way of life of the American Negro as in the indifference "41 This observation also is true and hostility of the white community.

of areas other than education, Prejudice against the Negro has declined sharply since the Second World War, making his other however, that handicaps relatively more important. It is not likely, changes that the Negro man-on- the-street will fully recognize the

have occurred; he still has -the lowest- paid and most menial jobs, he still lives in the worst neighborhoods, and he still sends his children to inadequate and mostly- black schools, Naturally, he concludes that is still producing the same old Whitey the same old cause effects, That these effects are now being produced largely (not entirely, of course) by other causes, especially differences of education, class culture in the case of those who are lower class , and income

is something that he cannot be expected to see for himself or to beespecially when the pointing out lieve if it is pointed out to him, is done by a white,

Negro leaders cannot be expected to explain that prejudice is no obstacle, Those of them who understand that it is not are the bound to pretend otherwise, Like every specialist, the Negro leader is prone to magnify to himself as well as to others the importance of his specialty, seeing every problem in terms of it, Even when he recognizes that the situation of most Negroes would be very far from satisfactory if there were no racial prejudice at all, the logic of his longer

position as a leader prevents him from saying so. To acknowledge that ones nonracial factors have become more important than racial

would cool the zeal of his supporters, give aid and comfort to the enemy, and destroy his very reason for being, So long as there is racial prejudice at work, the leader cannot risk seeming to any tolerate it , as he would if he emphasized those other (nonracial) aspects of the situation which from a practical (but not a moral) standpoint are now vastly more important, For the race leader,

98

THE UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED RACE: THINKING MAY MAKE IT so

there is everything to gain and nothing to lose by treating all problems as if they derived solely from the racial one, " Why, " asked Ben J, Wattenberg and Richard M, Scammon in 1973, " have the data of black advancement been kept secret by those who presumably have an interest in making them known?" The answer , they said is of course that civil-rights leaders do know what has happened, and even acknowledge it in private; but they have elected as a matter of policy to mute any public acknowledgment or celebration of black accomplishments in order to maintain moral and political pressure on the administration and on public opinion,

Whites , too, find prejudice a peculiarly satisfying explanation for

the troubles of the Negro. As was observed in the last chapter , it is characteristic of upper- and middle-class culture not only to try to improve oneself and one s society but also to blame oneself for not doing more and succeeding better. Members of these classes are prone to see all social problems in terms of their own moral shortcomings to say, for example , that the Negro is " forced to live in a ghetto " even when it is clear that he chooses to live among other Negroes, 43 The Brandeis researchers , for example , refer to Washington Park as a ghetto " even though their main finding is that most families live there by choice, Another study reports that the question " Do you

think Puerto Ricans can live anywhere they want to if they can afford

the rent?" was answered " yes " by 87 percent of a sample of New York Puerto Ricans , but calls the barrio a " ghetto " nevertheless.

The motives that produce this overemphasis on prejudice

understandable, It is graceless of the white , to say the very least

are

, to

run any risk of underemphasizing it. There is the feeling, too , that it

can do no harm and may do some good to err on the side of seeing more prejudice than is really there. Besides , even if prejudice is not important causally, it is very important morally, There are , however , at least two serious dangers in widespread overemphasis on prejudice as a cause ofthe Negro s troubles, The first is that it may lead to the adoption of futile and even destructive

policies and to the nonadoption of others that might do great good, It is clear , for example , that if !!Jlproving the housing of Washington Park Negroes is the goal , programs built on the assumption that the main problem is prejudice will lead nowhere,

The other, perhaps more serious danger in the overemphasis of prejudice is that it raises still higher the psychic cost of being Negro, a cost cruelly high under the best of circumstances, It is bad enough to suffer real prejudice , as every Negro does, without having to suffer imaginary prejudice as well. To refer once more to Washington Park, it is worth noting that some of the people there who did not look at the housing listed as available in white neighborhoods " knew " that Negroes could not buy it and that they would only be humiliated if they tried, In short , the overemphasis on prejudice encourages the Negro to define all his troubles in racial terms. Driving it into him that he is forced to live in a ghetto, the victim of the white man s hate and greed , and so on , makes it all the more difficult for him to feel that he is a man first and a Negro second.

THE PROBLEM OF UNEMPLOYMENT

101

(of Chicago) can literally drown in a sea of unemployment and under, having in employment. "4 Thomas F, Pettigrew, a social psychologist

CHAPTER FIVE

The Problem of Unemployment They keep telling you about job opportunities, this job

opportunity, and that , but who wants a job working all week and bringing home a sweat man s pay? - Man , aged eighteen , quoted in Youth ill the Ghetto

Maybe we are going to have to accept that many able- bodied people are never going to be engaged in economically productive employment. Welfare Commissioner of New York City, 1964

ANY people seem to think that the employment prospect in the city is dismal , especially for the unskilled, Technological

change in general and automation in particular are said to be eliminating jobs at an unprecedented rate , and it is predicted that before long there will be permanent , mass unemployment , especially of the

unskilled, Historian Constance Green describes a case in point: Where 200 hands had run the looms in a Holyoke , Massachusetts

mill in the I930S fifteen years later the great weave shed contained two people watching the automatic machines turn out the fine fabrics, . . , "1 Nathan Glazer , a sociologist , makes the same observation in general terms: Our society " has less and less work for people with only hands. "2 And Paul Goodman, essayist and novelist , puts it even

more bluntly: " For the uneducated there will be no jobs at a11."3 Pointing out that the baby boom of a few years ago is about to produce a big increase in th~,~ork force , demographer Donald Bogue writes that unless the new workers are kept in school and trained to hold down skilled jobs, " the economy of the entire metropolitan area

mind that Negroes are concentrated in unskilledwage sectors of the labor legislation and force, concludes that broadening of minimum not just for national prosperother measures are desperately needed " "5 John Kosa , a sociologist, ity but for improved race relations as well, thinks that cybernetics, " a sophisticated form of increasing mechaniservices and industrial zation, " eliminates " many unskilled jobs in laborers production " and " regularly dislocates a great number of market are in proporwhose chances to find new jobs on a shrinking" the " under- educated"

tion to their educational and industrial skills, among them being " likely to face chronic unemployment, have been all first-rate in their fields These authorities

quoted in order to suggest how widely and seriously the nature of the unemployment problem in the cities is misunderstood, This chapter will contend that automation and technological change are not creating a serious unemployment problem and are not likely to; that the unskilled, far from facing a hopeless future, will probably maintain and improve their position relative to the skilled (which is not to say that the relatively small number who are lower class will therefore benefit from

adopt a different style of life) and that the Negro will

this trend; and that some of the measures recommended by the quoted would increasing the minimum wage, for example authorities workers, while make matters worse for the least employable would probably do keeping them in school , for example others

is not more harm than good in most cases, The conclusion reached , but that the

that there is no unemployment problem in the cities

problem is of a different nature than is generally supposed,

I t will be

is an

noted that none of the persons quoted above

economist, Most economists find nothing new or fearsome in a high rate of technological change and in the substitution of hew methods automation

is used in various senses,

and machines for labor (the term

but it always refers to some special case of this general phenomenon), Indeed, they say that the enormous and increasing productivity of the economy is the best possible evidence that technological change leads

to economic, thatprogress. automation has caused a net loss of No one denies , however

"!!

103 102

THE PROBLEM OF UNEMPLOYMENT

THE UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED

plants , cities, and industries, Steel , coal , and oil refining have been cited as industries in which employment has declined (by JO or 20 percent in the 1960 S) largely from this cause.7 Some but not all- of the cities heavily dependent upon these industries suffered from these changes, Pittsburgh , for example , was hard hit; on the other hand , Detroit produced as many cars in 1963 as in 1955 while using 17 percent fewer employees, and had an unemployment rate below the national average in 1964, To be sure , one can always find instances , like that in Holyoke Massachusetts, where two people now do the work formerly done by

jobs in

particular

two hundred, Such instances are misleading, however ,

since they

ignore the fact that other technological changes (as well as other creating jobs factors altogether) may at the same time have been (although not in the same industries or cities) and that what is relevant

is the number of jobs in total. According to Robert

M, Solow , an

I.T, economist who was a member of the National Commission on Economic Progress , the question whether automation creates or destroys more jobs is unanswerable; he doubts, he says, that anyone could make a good estimate of the net number of jobs created or destroyed merely by the invention of the zipper or of sliced bread, The question is irrelevant anyway, he adds because the total volume of employment is not determined by the rate of technological progress; a modern mixed economy " can, by proper and active use of fiscal and monetary policy weapons, have full

Technology, Automation, and

employment for

any

plausible rate of technological change within a

range that is easily wide enough to cover the American experience, Even if it should turn out that the society has less work for the unskilled, the consequences would not necessarily be undesirable from their standpoint and they might be beneficial. It must be remembered that the price of unskilled labor , like that of other commodities is a function of supply as well as demand, Therefore even though the

demand for unskilled labor decreases the price of it will rise if the supply decreases even more, This in fact has happened over the long run. Before the Civil War the unskilled worker earned only about one- third as much as the skilled; at the turn of the century he earned about one- half

as much; no W"he

ably, the time will come when he will earn

as much. lO Conceivmore than the skilled

earns two- thirds

When there are only a few

worker. As James Tobin has observed, " people left in the population whose capacities are confined to garpaid calling, The same is true of bage- collecting, it will be a highdomestic service and all kinds of menial work, determines the price The interaction of supply and demand also paraphrase Tobin, labor , of course, It follows, then, to skilled of that when almost everyone is a skilled computer programmer, programming will be a low- paid job, In other words, it cannot be as-

in either sumed that raising the skill level of workers will result where college higher wages or reduced unemployment. In states

graduates constitute a relatively large proportion of the work force the percentage difference between their earnings and those of other workers is less than in states where they constitute a relatively small proportion of the work force, The same is true with respect to high school graduates as compared to elementary school , either graduates, favor or retard Changes in technology do not , on the whole the employment of Negroes, Indeed, Negroes, because they are concentrated near the bottom of the occupational ladder, have obtained advances in income than have whites, relative far greater Among noneconomists the belief is widespread that automation

reduces the demand for unskilled labor more than for other labor. On a priori grounds, there is no reason to expect this, however, and empirically it does not appear to be so, The impact is mixed:others in someit cases automation does eliminate unskilled jobs, but in

enables unskilled workers to do things formerly done by skilled workers, In the manufacturing and service industries, many jobs done by the unskilled and the semiskilled have proved harder to automate than those done by more skilled workers, workers cannot get jobs, In 1972, 90

It is not true that unskilled percent of nonfarm unskilled laborers and nearly 98 percent offarmworkers were employed, These, incidentally, were the highest unemployment rates for these groups in ten

years.15

aggregate demand of services, If demand is high enough,

The crucial factor is not automation but the

the economy for goods and

everyone who wants to work can find a job no matter how lacking in , aggregate demand skills he or she may be, To assure full employment will have to grow constantly, however, for the number of persons

104 / THE UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED

THE PROBLEM OF UNEMPLOYMENT

105

wanting jobs is increasing along with the population asa whole , and percent, respectively. Among still younger teen-agers and dropouts, the average output per man- hour of work is increasing too, According the rate was even higher, to the National Commission on Technology, Automation, and EcoAs is apparent from these figures, a small reduction in the general nomic Progress , aggregate demand must grow by more than 4 percent unemployment rate would make a big difference to those near the end a year just to keep the unemployment rate from rising; to decrease the of the hiring line. If the general rate were brought down to about 2 unemployment rate , it must grow by even more. In the past , the percent (which must be close to the absolute minimum, since some economy has seldom, if ever , grown at a rate faster than 3, 5 percent workers are always in the process of moving from one job to another), for any extended time; however , it can be made to do so, the Commis- even those at the end of the line would, in a well- functioning labor sion said , by positive fiscal , monetary, and manpower policies,16 market, receive job offers, In the United States the general yearly If the labor market is kept tight , employers will find it necessary to unemployment rate has never, except in wartime , fallen below 3, employ people previously thought undesirable or even unemployable. percent. Therefore , the rate of unemployment among the leastOn the other hand , if the labor market is allowed to become slack wanted workers is normally high, especially teen- agers and women who are not they will pick and choose, The labor market, the Commission said, For some people can be viewed the main support of a family - a job is more a convenience than a necessity. For obvious reasons, people in this position are more likely as a gigantic " shapeup, " with members of the labor force queued in order of choosey" about than others to leave ajob casually and to be slow and " their relative attractiveness to employers, If the labor market operates proportion of such people efficiently, employers will start at the head of the line , selecting as many as . finding another. Changes that increase the for example , larger numbers of teen-agers in the in the labor force they need of employees most attractive to them, Their choice may be based on objective standards relating to ability, or on dubious standards of race population, fewer small children to be looked after by mothers, wider sex, or age; wage differentials may also be important; and formal education acceptance of the view that women should compete on equal terms may be used as a rough screening device, The total number employed and all tend to raise the unemployment rate , over what it with men unemployed depends primarily on the general state of economic activity, would otherwise be, Insofar as it reflects these causes, the higher rate The employed tend to be those near the beginning and the unemployed does not have the same significance as the old, for many of those now those near the end of the line, Only as demand rises will employers reach counted as unemployed are really people who have chosen not to further down the line in their search for employees,17 work for the time being; even for those teen-agers and married women who are anxious to work, unemployment does not as a rule involve the Those near the far end of the line that is , those considered least desirable by employers degree of hardship that it often does for men and women who are the tend to be teen-agers and other young main support of families. In the past decade or two the proportion of people with little education and little or no job experience , members of the lower class (who cannot be depended upon from one day to the workers who are only weakly attached to the labor force has grown next), and victims of racial and other prejudice, At the very end of the substantially, as can be seen from the fact that the percentage of line , of course , are those who have teen-agers and women in the labor force rose from 36 in 1956 to 44 in all these handicaps lower1972, Largely because ofthese changes, unemployment is now more a class-Negro- teen-age dropouts. In 1972 when the general unemploymatter of turnover than of shortage of jobs. (In 1972, less than half of ment rate was 5, 6 percent, the rate among adult men 25 years and older was only 3. 1 percent , but that among eighteen- and nineteenthe unemployed had been fired or laid off, about half were unemyear-old white males was 13A percent and that among eighteen- and ployed for less than five weeks , and about one- fourth were young nineteen- year-old white females was 12. 3 percent, The rates for people , many of whom were other students or graduates s~eking their full employnonwhite males and females of these ages were 26, 2 percent and 38. first job ),18 In view of the changed situation, the goal of "

106

THE UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED

ment, " some authorities think , should be moved from 4 percent unemployed to five,19 Economists disagree as to why we do not come closer to achieving the full employment goal. One reason, some say, is that public opinion does not give the President or anyone else the authority to carry a

fiscal and monetary policy into effect. A President can only recommend actions needed to maintain the necessary high level of aggregate demand; other bodies, especially Congress and the Federal Reserve System , pursue frequently unrelated and perhaps contradictory policies of their own. Even without these bodies to contend with, public opinion might prevent a President from taking the necessary steps, Strange as it may seem , Presidents have on occasion failed even to propose tax cuts thought urgently necessary for fear of the reaction from righteously indignant taxpayers, A second reason why we do not reduce unemployment to the barest minimum , some economists say, is that the measures required would worsen the nation s international balance of payments problem,

This fear arises from a widespread and perhaps not wholly rational concern about the value of the dollar in relation to other nations currencies, The third reason that economists give to explain an unnecessarily high rate of unemployment refers not to mythology but to interests that are real. A reduction in unemployment , they say, would require monetary and fiscal policies that would raise the consumer price level. In effect , a 4 percent unemployment rate would have to be paid for by accepting at least a 4 percent rate of inflation. To get the unemployment rate down further , say to 3 percent, would entail more inflation than the public would stand for. There is, in other words, a fundamen-

tal conflict of interest between those at the end of the hiring line and the much larger number of people (ones on fixed incomes, especially) who would lose by inflation, Some economists go so far as to assert that there is no steady rate of inflation that would reduce the average level of unemployment. This

position was taken by Milton Friedman in his 1968 presidential address to the American .F;conomic Association. 21 He acknowledged that by speeding up inflation one may reduce unemployment , but he pointed out that it is impossible to keep on speeding it up forever and

THE PROBLEM OF UNEMPLOYMENT

107

he maintained that whenever the rate stabilizes people will grow accustomed to the new rate and unemployment will return to its old level or to an even higher one, Some other economists, while not somewhat more entirely disagreeing with this, have since taken a , has concluded from optimistic view, Martin S, Feldstein, for example his calculations that the average long-run unemployment rate can be but probably not below - 4 percent by expansionary lowered to fiscal and monetary policy,

At first glance it may appear that the people near the end of the hiring line are there solely because they are young, unskilled victims of racial prejudice , and so on, On reflection , however, it will be seen that , except in a recession, when skilled workers bid for unskilled work, there is no reason to expect a higher rate of unemployment

among the classes of labor that are the least capable (the inexperienced, the unskilled, and so on) than among those that are the most capable, This is because the attractiveness of a class of labor to an employer depends not solely upon its capability (real or imagined) but A lazy worker, for example , is more attractive to price, also upon its an employer than an energetic one , provided that his wages (and the

other costs involved in using him) are low enough to more than compensate for his lesser productivity, To state the matter generally, those at the end of the hiring line are there not because of an absolute incapability (real or imagined) but because

the price of their services

If their price were low enough, makes it unprofitable to employ them, they would move to the head of the hiring line , forcing some more attractive " (Le., more attractive in all but price) workers to the rear. practice , the price of the least capable (real or imagined) would In have to be very low indeed in order for this to occur; it might even have to be negative, employers being paid to take the workers they found least attractive , but this does not invalidate the principle involved, One reason why low- quality labor is overpriced is that numerous

laws and institutional arrangements ,

all supposed to benefit the

worker , make it so, Minimum-wage laws are among the worst offenders. Enacted by the federal government23 and by thirty- three states, Puerto Rico , and the District of Columbia , these laws forbid an

108

THE PROBLEM OF UNEMPLOYMENT

THE UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED

109

employer to pay a worker in a covered occupation less than a certain view supported by theory and by much, but not all , empirical eviwage ($ 1 , 60 an hour under the federal laws24) even though the dence, In 1973, after reviewing recent empirical studies, Andrew alternative may be not to employ him at all, Originally, minimum Brimmer , a Negro economist of distinction (he is a member of the wage was an approach to curbing prostitution: the laws applied only Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System), concluded that to women and were passed by some states shortly after the federal although the issue could not be regarded as settled (" it is difficult to government adopted the Mann Act (1910), (" Economic needs, " a draw firm conclusions from these empirical studies unless one is reformer explained, " impel many a girl toward a personally degrading willing to play one methodology off against another ), it would be life, "25) Later , northern textile manufacturers joined with labor well to allow employment of youths at less than the minimum wage, unions to support federal minimum-wage legislation in order This, he thought, might preserve some jobs, particularly for sixteenreduce southern competition by raising the price of its labor, to seventeen- year-olds, that would otherwise be lost, although it was Although the minimum is redefined upward from time to time, it is not likely to lead to an expansion of the teen-age share of employnever set high enough to affect most wage workers, 26 Those who are ment.29 affected are the previously low- paid and low- productivity ones, but Feldstein has criticized the minimum wage on quite different not all of them; many of the very lowest- paid are in occupations grounds, It works to the disadvantage of many young people who get agriculture, for instance jobs, he says, because those with few skills and below-average educanot covered by the laws, A principal effect of the minimum wage is to " injure some of the tion are often not productive enough to permit the employer to pay while also providing on- the-job training and them the minimum wage lowest- paid workers by forcing them into even lower- paid occupathat they desperately need, Lowering tions exempt from the act, one of which is unemployment, "27 An opportunity for advancement

employer who does not have to compete with other employers for labor may pay his workers less than their labor is worth in production; in his case the effect of the minimum wage may be to raise wages without creating unemployment, But the number of such employers is negligible: workers today move around by car and otherwise and

usually have a variety of job alternatives, This being the case ,

the

effect of the minimum wage is not to cause an employer to raise wages

(except as he may have been about to do so anyway); rather , it is to cause him to eliminate all labor that will cost more than it is worth in his productive process, Some work that would be done if the price of this labor were lower is left undone, Other work is done in ways that economize on low- productivity but high-cost labor; labor-saving methods are tried , machines are substituted for labor , and a somewhat higher quality of labor is hired at the somewhat higher wage set by law , leaving the least productive with fewer and worse opportunities than before, " What good does it do to a black youth " asks Paul A. Samuelson to know that an employer must pay him $ 1, 60 an hour or $2, 00- if that amount is what keeps him from getting ajob?"28 That youths are kept from getting jobs by the minimum wage is a

the minimum wage for such workers might help, he thinks, but it would not be sufficient: the government should give youth employment scholarships to supplement earnings temporarily and allow the young workers to " buy" more and better on- the-job training, In some labor markets trade unions doubtless have more effect than do minimum wage laws in fixing the price of low- productivity labor above its value to employers, thus making its employment unprofitable, In New York City s highly unionized construction industry, for example , the union scale for unskilled building laborers as of July I, 197 I , was $6, 82 an hour for a thirty- five- hour week, plus pensions and insurance, (Incidentally, this compares to $7, 79 for skilled workers, )

One effect of overpaying

the unskilled workers is to cause

fewer of them to be employed; the construction industry is vigorous in for example , diamond drills that will go its effort to find techniques by which it can economize on labor, Another through concrete effect is to restrict the jobs to a favored few, mostly workers in a relatively good position to get jobs elsewhere, Negroes, for example have great difficulty getting into apprenticeship programs, The job security and seniority provisions now common in union

THE UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED

110

THE PROBLEM OF UNEMPLOYMENT

UNEMPLOYMENT RATES FOR MALE TEEN- AGERS(AGES 14- 19), WHITE AND NONWHITE COMPARED WITH INCREASES IN THE MINIMUM WAGE 28%

28%

24%

24%

20%

20%

NbN~wkl~E TtE~- ApE~S

111

contracts also tend to cause discrimination against low- productivity workers and probably also against Negroes, Knowing that he will incur large costs if he cannot discharge , or must eventually promote, a worker who is incompetent, an employer is likely to reject job applicants about whose future competence he cannot be reasonably certain, Therefore the worker who is perfectly capable of pushing a brush around .the factory floor but not of doing much else will not get a job when promotion by seniority is mandatory: the employer cannot risk some day having to put him in charge of an expensive machine or in a to be racial supervisory position, Some portion of what appears discrimination may be generated by job security requirements in the opinion of Doeringer and Fiore, " Race " they say, " is an inexpensive screening criterion, Where two racial populations differ significantly in terms of the proportion of persons possessing certain desired

16%

12%

16%

characteristics, the most efficient hiring policy may be simply to reject "31 all members of the one racial population,

12%

Occupational licensure is another way in which the law says that some labor must either be overpaid or else not employed, By restricting entry into certain occupations to those who have passed a course of training - by requiring, for example , that in order to cut hair one

must graduate from a barbering school that provides at least one t~ousand hours of instruction in " theoretical subjects" and then go

1,\

$1.bo

Y11

through an apprenticeship, 32 or that a television repairman or garage the cities mechanic pass a rigorous examination and post a bond33 and states reduce employment opportunities for the workers whose possibilities are most limited, set an Local , state , and federal agencies are all under pressure to " example of enlightened wage policy, " that is , to pay labor more than it

JHF

~INIMlu~ W~GjE RATE

-I-

is worth, This policy injures workers at the bottom of the heap by

4dc 1

....J.

atel e.ffective

giving others not at the bottom an incentive to take jobs they other-

Dqte p ~sse

wise would avoid, Early in 1965 some three thousand persons took examinations for 125 jobs as coin collectors for Boston s metropolitan transit system, The jobs could have been done by workers who were

1948 Source:

The Free Society Association , Inc. The Minimum Wage Rate; Who Really

Pays?-An

Interview with Yale Brazen and Milton Friedman

(Washington ,

D,

, April

Bureau of Labor Statistics, U. S, Department of Labor. Reprinted by courtesy of The Free Society Association, Inc. 1966),

Source of chart data:

not capable of doing much else , but because the wages were set higher benefits - lowthan np.ed be - $3, 00 an hour plus various fringe capability workers had to compete for them against workers who could have been better employed, Naturally, the low-capability work-

- "

THE PROBLEM OF UNEMPLOYMENT / 113

112 / THE UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED

ers lost out; they remained unemployed while those who got the jobs wasted ability doing what less-able people could have done as well. After the Watts riots it was pointed out that the city s civil-service system had contributed to the Negroes ' employment problem. Operating on " merit" alone , it had established such high education qualifications for

employees that most Watts residents could not get civil-

service jobs even as common laborers. This outcome would have been impossible had the city not been overpaying its employees; the Watts

residents would have had little or no competition for the jobs if the only qualification had been ability to perform the task and if the wage rate had not been above the market. Opinion is another factor that often causes overpricing of and therefore unemployment of ---'- low-value

labor. In every locale peo-

ple have a common idea of the lowest wage it is " reasonable "

to

expect workers to accept even if the alternative is to remain unemployed. Frequently, this " informal" minimum wage is higher than the legal one. And frequently it calls for paying wages only a philanthropist could afford. In Detroit , for example , auto companies pay unskilled production workers a very high wage - $5. 17 an hour in 1973 (as compared to $6. 61 for the skilled worker) and this high rate is taken by unskilled workers in all industries as the model of what is fair " and " decent. " The auto workers ' wages are high not because unskilled workers are more valuable in the auto industry than elsewhere , but because the power of an aggressive union (the UA W) has forced them up. Unskilled workers not lucky enough to get one of the small number of good union jobs especially workers in low- paying enterprises , such as laundries and car parking lots earn less than half as much as the auto workers. Naturally they are angry at the injustice of it all. They suppose that they are being underpaid, not that the others are being overpaid.

Working for less than the informal minimum

for peanuts

destroys a man s standing in whatever circle he moves in and

undermines his self-respect. Some men prefer to go on welfare. In the summer of 1965, when a federal youth employment project in Detroit proposed paying seventy youths the legal minimum wage while training them for better- paying"jobs, it could find only thirty who would accept its offer. 35 The legal minimum , then $ 1.25 an hour , was

peanuts. " Three years later, the Labor Department made a hard-core " unem$3, 104, 044 grant to train and find jobs for 970 " ployed in Detroit , but there was some question whether enough men could be found to accept training. The city had about thirty thousand eligibles, about ten thousand of whom were considered extreme cases. However , the trainees were to receive only $ 1.60 an hour during training and $2. 30 an hour afterward. A laid-off auto worker, it was company more pointed out , would receive from the state and the take- home pay than a man putting in forty hours a week at $2. 30 an

hour. 36

Illicit enterprises, too , tend to have the effect of setting an informal

minimum wage for unskilled labor that has no relation to the market

value of such labor and that other employers cannot afford to pay. As a result , the young " dropout" loses face and self-respect unless he is either a " hustler " or an idler; the suggestion that he be paid what his work is worth is tantamount to an insult. Asked why he did not go downtown and get a job, a Harlem youth replied: , come on. Get off that crap, I make $40 or $50 a day selling marijuana, You want me to go down into the garment district and push one of those trucks through the street and at the end of the

week take

home $40 or $50 if I' m lucky? Come off it. They don t have animals doing what you want me to do, There would be some society to protect animals if anybody had them pushing those damn trucks around. I'm better than an animal, but nobody protects me. Go away, mister. I got to look out for myself.37

In the final analysis, it is middle-class opinion that sets the informal minimum wage for low-value labor , and it does so , of course , on the basis of its own notion of what is reasonable. Unemployment compen-

sation and other welfare programs explicitly recognize an informal minimum: no applicant for assistance may be required to accept unreasonable " offers of employment, which is to say that no one may be required to work for what he is worth to his employer if this is much under what the general (middle- class) opinion considers " fair. One important reason, then, why the number of jobs for very why, for example , fewer shops make low-value labor is declining occasional deliveries, fewer part- time messengers are hired, fewer is not, as Paul people are paid to mow lawns and shovel sidewalks

114

THE UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED

THE PROBLEM OF UNEMPLOYMENT

1 15

Goodman contends , that the system is " tightly organized and highly Another cause of unemployment among the low-skilled is the urbanized "38 but rather that those who might do these jobs have been; tendency of some employers to set hiring standards that are unreasontold by parents, welfare departments , and the ever more affluent' ably high, thus screening out applicants who could perform satisfactomi?dle class generally that the small amounts they could earn by : rily if given the chance. A study of the practices of a national s~mple doIng them are " peanuts too little for a self-respecting person to of 280 employers , public and private , showed that even In the employment of laborers (as distinguished from " service " and " blue-

bother with.

Racial prejudice and discrimination are surely partly responsible' collar "

workers) 14 percent required a high school diploma, 17

for the very high rate of unemployment among black youth. Even percent required that applicants pass a test , when they have had as good schooling as whites , self-confidence and feel that they will not

45 percent required

blacks often lack references , and 57 percent attached importance to " good

be treated fairly, This appearance. " Even when the laborer job was a

personal

" dead-end" one a

background effect" of prior discrimination is an important handi- record of alcoholism was a disqualification with 46 percent of the cap in itself, But in addition there is likely to be discrimin ation employers, " other health problems" with 46 percent , garnishment both real and imagined - on

with 18 percent, and an arrest record with 18 percent.41 Insofar as not motivated by racial animus lead to racial responses of a kind such standards really are unrelated to work requirements, employers which seem to justify the practices, For example , employers, knowing (acting against their own interest) in effect price many workers out of that blacks are twice as likely as whites to quit their jobs, may for the market, purely business reasons be loath to hire , train , or promote them. In " Credentialism, " as it has been called, is illegal when racially these circumstances the black employee , seeing himself discriminated discriminatory, In March 1 971 the United States Supreme Court against , becomes frustrated and sour; this leads to absenteeism, to found in favor of black employees who, in a class action suit, sought recalcitrance in taking orders from foremen , to impatience in deal- to prevent an employer from requiring a high school diploma and a ings with older co-workers (some of whom are manifestly racist), , " satisfactory intelligence test score " for certain jobs which had preand to early quitting. 39 The employer s initial judgment, a correct viously been given only to whites, In a unanimous opinion, the Court one , is in this way reinforced in the manner of a self- fulfilling pro ph- held that the intent of Congress in passing Title VII of the Civil ecy, Exactly the same can be said of the employee s judgment Rights Actof 1964 was " to achieve equality of employment oppor" and that the burden rests upon an employer to show that a the job. Some discriminatory practices

course, tunities , of

~al though it undoubtedly is, racial discrimination is probably a " given requirement has a manifest relation to, the employment in

less Important cause of the high unemployment rate among Negro question ; the absence of discriminatory intent, the Court ruled, does teenagers than the manifold opportunities that the Negro district not justify requirements or tests that do not have this manifest relaoffers for " action " of the sorts that many young people live for, tion, the evaluation of appliThis . i ~ suggested by the fact that the unemployment rate declines Ironically, one form of credentialism precIpItously between ages 16-21 and 21- 24 and also by the fact cants on the basis of diplomas and degrees - may recently have minority groups, According to Christothat once they have " settled down " as family heads black men are at begun to operate in favor of

~east as likely to be employed as whites of the same age and school- pher Jencks, blacks now seem to be getting slightly more schoo~i Ing, That male black teenagers do not expect to be discriminated than whites with comparable test scores. 43 If one assumes, as It against is implied (although other interpretations are possible) by plausible to do , that test scores are better predictors of job perforthe fact that they give as their lowest acceptable wage a figure almost mance than years of schooling, then whites are at a disadvantage with the same as that given by their white counterparts.

40

employers who take only the latter into account. A further irony arises

',

''

,-, ' ~ ,

?,

116 / THE UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED

THE PROHL

UNEMPLOYMENT / I 17

from the fact that employers who rely solely upon interviews , ignorinl Even if the total supplyof ' obs is large , there is likely to e exce credentials of all sorts , may, consciously or not , be more discrimin"erhaps in the very long run some hronic unemployment among the tory than those who give weight to diplomas or test scores, If onlr,nskilled workers who are concen~rated in the inner city, For one Interviews were used , Jencks suspects, " upward mobile men from om the inner to the outer city 100 ing, factones a, h ve lon been movm status homes would find themselves at more of a disadvantage tha od from the city to Also since the Secon beyond th subur s they do now, lled workers have moved into the ~ I d unk' World War , large numbers ,0 f Thomas Sowell makes an extremely important point II production jobs were in central thlr s ~ a when h writes that " the net effect of any institutional arrangement which set nner ities; city, now (In well1929 undetwoThe number of unskilled workhalf are t e the rate of pay above that required to attract the number of qualifietrs ) As the previous ~~ie has risen, , I ~lass-cultural in the centr ~l cIties, meanw workers needed is to make it cheaper to discriminate in deciding , and racial factors ~lc, from following their , econo not to hire, "45 In other words, the employer who passes over thewhq::hapters have poInted out jobs out of end to prevent ~ome f~ctory wor er applicant whose work would contribute most to his profit in favor 0 the : the relative abundance of cheap city, Of particular Imp?rtance ar one whose race , sex , age , or other charactenstIcs are ared to the suburbs and the more to hl~housmg m central city as liking pays a price for indulging his tastes or prejudices, An employer me workers to commute to Jo s m ,:"Illingness 0 however , who is in one way or another prevented from using the profit, inability or un criterion - as , for example , by formal or informal minimum wage the suburban frInge, '~on e osts and the need for space, the union practices , licensure laws , or politically determined wage rates Nex~ ,to high trans ~-varor ue a or xplains why factories have left the pays no price. Indeed , since he cannot use the businesslike crite- overpn ~mg of lo instances employers have gone to city s ~ rapidly. I rion of " low bidder gets the job " he must find some other (unbusi-inner the suburbs m order to ~Ul7:n , n:w plants that would enable them to nesslike) criterion by which to choose among equally qualified appli- take advantage of labor-savIng ~ethods and devices,

"44

an .

com

cants, This may help to explain the facts alleged in a suit filed in a

cities of jobs in manufa ~n ra1ffset inthe theloss 1960 S by increases m Puerto Ricans and other Spamsh-speakmg persons make up 16 per- service ce communications, business ran finance an actIvl les cent of New York City s population they have only 1, , especIa ~, personal services and ~IS lOn ~nd t percent of the services, recreat sanitation menjobs, 46 For unskilled workers these are9 very good jobs government. This shift ralse ~' value of the cities ' product , but It indeed: the starting salary is $9, 690 , there are many fringe benefits , was disadvanta ~eous t uns Ille~ workers, Service activities do not and great Job secunty; needless to say, then manufacturing and for the un, the number of applicants ofler obch far exceeds the number of jobs, Since one person can toss a bag of d ad end, "47 Moreover, the cntena are : skilled most service JObs garbage Into a truck about as well as another more subjective and there, there IS no purely i for se ectmg ser job-related basis for choosing among the many qualified applicants, persons t any rate unfavorable to or a Under these circumstances it is almost inevitable that criteria unre- fore more ?ften unfair to desirable, No one cares if a facto whose attnbutes are deeme ~n late d t~ performa ~ce or very weak~y relat ~d to it -:- in t he case of the wor~er speaks crud ~ly : ~~r:~c c himself in the wrong places, or sanItatIOn men , height and fluency In English :~ read signs like DANGE~ - ~O wIll be Introduced, If some of these criteria reflect the tastes or prejudices of the people who physically unatt~actlve t of the assembly line movIng, lIt~le SMOKING and If he keeps , IS make them up, no one should be surprised, The surprising thing 'p~s on the other hand, it is essential ;rvl ce Jo would be to find an underrepresentation of Puerto Ricans in a sanita- else matters, In many s Impr ession " on the middle- class ker ' that the service wor

In almost all ofwas the more large c federal district court by several Puerto Ricans who said that although turing and trade

t a

msu

as mu trammg as oe

vice wor ers en

h'

tion bureau which paid its workers no more than the market required,

people he

ma e a go

' racial serves. If ethmc,

class, or other charactenstIcs

I 18

THE UNHEA VENL Y CITY REVISITED

render him unattractive in their eyes, he is for that reason unemployable. The problem is not that he is unskilled , but that he is aesthetically objectionable- he spoils the decor , so to speak. 48 (In the survey of hiring standards cited above , employers were almost twice as likely to require " a good appearance " of white-collar and service workers as of blue-collar workers and laborers. 49) It would appear that the way to solve the employment problem in the city is to allow the price of all labor , including the least valuable to fall to a level at which it will all be purchased. If a ditchdigger

work is worth no more than $ 1. 00

an hour to anyone and

if a

fifteen- year-old dropout's work is worth no more than 50 cents an hour , these should be their wages. The point is that low-value labor

must be priced no higher than it is worth if those who can use it are to have an incentive to do so. It will be objected that to require the low-value worker to work for what he is worth to an employer is to condemn him and his family to poverty. This does not follow. Much low-value work is done not by breadwinners but by persons, especially married women and teenagers , who want to supplement an income already above the poverty line. But even if this aspect is disregarded , the objection is not a weighty one. Theoretically, at least , there is no reason why a family (or unattached person) earning too little could not be subsidized from public sources so as to bring its total income up to a level deemed adequate. 5o This arrangement has an obvious advantage to the public: whatever the worker earns , however little , reduces the cost of his support. The main beneficiaries , however , would be the workers themselves. A job can be much more than

I 19

THE PROBLEM OF UNEMPLOYMENT

a source of income. It can be an

opportunity to learn things, to test one s ability to stand up to strains to get out of the house and away from home , and to feel that one is a part, however small , of a worthwhile undertaking. Especially for a male , the job (along with other things) helps establish one s identity and supports one s self-respect. Obviously, a job that pays " peanuts is no aid to self-respect; on the contrary, having such a job entails a loss of it. Other , nonmonetary advantages accrue even from a poor job, however , and if everyone were expected to work for what his work is worth , the lowest paid woold have at least somewhat less cause for embarrassment than they have now.

The idea of pricing low-value labor into the market is not worth

Trade unions are not about to stop trying to get their members paid more than their work is worth. Minimum-wage laws will not be repealed; instead, the minimum rate will be pushed steadily upward (Bayard Rustin, the Negro leader, said that he would gladly trade the whole war on poverty for an increase to $2. 00 in the minimum wage). Occupational licensure will not be dropped so long as various occupational groups can gain by restricting entry and raising prices. Nor is the idea that one should not work for " peanuts " (even if that happens to be all that one s labor is worth) likely to lose its hold. On the contrary, the informal minimum is likely to rise at an accelerating rate: as the standard of living of the affluent goes up, more and more low- pay, no- future jobs will be thought to be beneath the dignity of even the poorest and the least able. If low-value labor cannot be priced into the market , what can be done to make the best of a bad situation? One familiar suggestion is to train the unskilled , the idea being that if the price of low-value labor cannot be brought down to its value- in- production, then its value- inproduction should be raised up to its price. In practice , however, this can seldom be done simply by teaching the worker new skills. What serious consideration , however; it is hopelessly Utopian.

makes the kind of

labor here under discussion

valuable to the

employer is usually not so much possession of skills (the ones needed are mostly manual and can be learned on the job by almost anyone reliability, who will try); rather, it is possession of certain qualities motivation to learn, and adaptability to the demands of the work situation. Perhaps this fact helps to explain why the federal govern-

ment's Manpower Development Training program has not achieved more. 51 Of course , even if training programs succeeded in making employees more productive , they would not make them more employable if their wages were made to rise even faster than their productivity; as was emphasized before , it is overpricing of labor that is the principal obstacle to its employment , and skilled labor, too, can be overpriced. one that has natural appeal to small-city Another possibility is to offer tax exemptions and mayors and Chambers. of Commerce other subsidies to induce factories to stay in the city or to move back to it from the suburbs. For this approach to work, the subsidies

THE PROBLEM OF UNEMPLOYMENT / 121

120 / THE UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED

, govern-

might need relocation runs to many hundreds of thousands ment programs of this kind offer little hope, A more practical approach is to make it easier for the unskilled or up for the loss of accessibility and the other advantages that would be semiskilled worker living in the inner city to get to the suburban ring, gained by moving, As a practical matter , city governments are very , bus and train schedules are often rarely able to offer subsidies large enough to have much effect , which I where the new jobs are, At present to the city than to carry city may be just as well anyway, since in the long run the city must adjust I better arranged to carry suburbanites not own workers to the suburbs, Most low- income city dwellers do is to becoming a center for services and exchanges rather than for the someautomobiles, while public transportation to the suburbs production of goods. To race for manufacturing jobs, says Wilbur R, times poor and frequently expensive. The study of employment in the the A Preface to Urban Economics is to swim against Thompson in his I by poverty areas " of fifty-one of the largest cities made in 197 the current , especially if it is unskilled and semiskilled jobs that are Census showed that about 20 percent of the employed persons worked sought.52 Even so , it might cost the public less to subsidize the return outside of the city; of these, nearly 40 percent spent forty minutes or of factories to the city than to support workers who are permanently large enough , at least , to offset the added costs to the employer of using the overpriced labor and to make

offered must be quite large

unemployed. There is an important danger , however , that a job-

more getting to work, Of the workers who used public transportation,

creation program may attract more migrants from the rural South, Indeed , it is possible , as Kain and Persky have pointed out, that more migrants might come than there are jobs created , and unemployment in the city would actually increase, 53

about 20 percent paid fares of fifty cents or more each way. Another way to improve the job situation of the unskilled (as was pointed out in Chapter Two, economists disagree as to its impor-

If there is a surplus of unskilled workers in the big cities , perhaps

the thing to do is to assist them to move to places where their long-run from Harlem , say, to rural areas upstate or to prospects are better

the centers of space-age industry in Southern California, This idea seems plausible until one considers that in many places employment opportunities for the unskilled are even worse than they are in the big cities. It is hard to justify moving workers from Harlem until other workers whose job situations are even worse have been moved from, say, Appalachia. As a practical matter , moreover , it is often impossible to persuade workers to leave the city even when doing so would be to their material advantage, 54 People who have lived in a big city all

their lives are apt to find a small one intolerably dull, and if,

as is

neighborhood with a even a " better certain class and ethnic character, then another lacking this character may not suit them at all, Finally, an one unpleasant fact must be taken into account: places to which the government might propose moving the workers would fight the idea tooth and nail , for the- workers usually would be people whose

usually the case , they are accustomed to a

income , class, and race (they would be Negroes in most cases) would make them unwelcome, Considering that the number of persons who

tance) would be to eliminate the barriers that discourage them from moving from the inner city to the suburban ring, The inner city is the focus of radial transportation lines extending in almost all directions , casual to the outer perimeter of the metropolitan area, Therefore generally find it the most logiworkers - domestics , for example , some suburban areas where it , however cal place to reside. There are would be advantageous for these workers to live, and if free to do so many workers would move there from the inner city. They seldom are free to do so, however; in the name of health, safety, and the maintenance of local property values , suburban building codes and zoning regulations commonly set housing standards so high as in effect to allow exclude low- income people, If such standards were relaxed tosafeuse of the cheapest housing that can reasonably be called

some unskilled workers would move mobile homes, for example to the suburbs rather than commute or (the only alternative for some) be unemployed or underemployed, All interferences with the freedom of workers to live where they please , whether in the inner city or in the suburban ring, tend to contribute to unemployment, It must be recognized, however

, that where there exists a large

stock of relatively cheap housing in the inner city, and where it is relatively easy to commute from the inner city to the suburban ring,

122 / THE UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED

THE PROBLEM OF UNEMPLOYMENT

most unskilled workers will prefer to live in the inner city, Apart from housing and transportation , there is another consideration: Negroes (like members of other minority groups) will not in general move to places where they will be cut off from the social life of their group, Once enough families to constitute a " critical mass " have moved to a particular place , the growth of population there may be very rapid; establishing the critical mass presents a real difficulty, however, Eventually, the logic of metropolitan growth will of itself cause the low-earner to move to the suburban ring, As always , he will replace the well-off, who themselves will be moving still farther out, leaving

behind housing better than that which the

low-earners presently

occupy, As was pointed out in Chapter Two , many suburbs built after the war will be " downgraded" and ready for occupancy by the not well-off in the next decade or two, In the meantime , of course , the older housing in the central city will be wearing out. That low-earning workers will eventually reach the suburban ring does not necessarily mean that they will find jobs, however. By the time they arrive , some factories will have moved still farther out. Moreover , many jobs will

have been eliminated altogether by suburban employers who could not wait for workers to arrive, The discussion so far has proceeded on the assumptions of the queue " theory that was introduced on page 104, The remainder of the chapter will be based upon an alternative theory, developed by Michael J. Fiore , the policy implications of which are altogether different. 56

The " dual market" theory distinguishes a " primary " from a " secondary " labor market. In the primary market wages are high, working conditions are good , employment is stable , employees have chances to advance , and work rules are administered equitably. In the secondary market , by contrast , wages and working conditions are poor , workers are always in danger of being laid off, there are few if any chances of advancement, and work rules are administered arbitrarily, " Disadvantaged" workers find jobs only in the secondary market. Insofar as the exclusion of secondary workers from the primary

market is based on somethIng other than race , class , or sex discrimi-

nation, the cause is usually their inability to

show up for work

123

regularly and on time, Lack of work skills may be a contributing factor , butthe essential problem is that the life style of the worker is not compatible with the requirements of the primary market, " Leisure time in low- income neighborhoods, " Doeringer and Fiore explain, " frequently dominated by street-corner life, a life-style widely prevaghettos in lent among low- income people in general and the black

particular. For the individual attached to the street , status and position in the world are defined by his group, His life has reality only in a group context; divorced from the group he is lonely and 10st.The goal

of group life is constant

excitement. Its behavior is episodic; an

endless period of ' hanging

around,' punctuated by short adventures

undertaken by the group as a whole or by individuals. Life thus tends to be immediate and

sensational; past adventures are continually

recalled, and the future is not anticipated,

"57

Workers who have the traits implied by this life style are not

, talk acceptable in the primary market. Those who come to work late , or pilfer supplies lose back to foremen , are careless with equipment their jobs: there is no place in the primary market for workers who cannot, or will not, accept the discipline of the shop, In the secondary market, however , such behavior is taken for granted, The employee need accept very little discipline, He may get away with being late for work, tipsy on the job, and even with a certain amount of pilferage, , of course , paid

Because he is less productive and more costly, he is less than he otherwise would be, And because the employer does not expect him to stay long, he makes no investment in his training. As this suggests, the instability of both worker and job interact and, in doing so , reinforce one another. The job has been adapted to the life style of the worker, but the life style of the worker has also been adapted to the job, Knowing that he will be poorly paid and have no job security and knowing too that he can get away with being late and or at least otherwise undependable, the worker is encouraged in the pattern of behavior that confines him to not discouraged from the secondary market, what the " queue " theory The " dual market" theory explains why, even in periods of high employment, many workers does not are not offered steady and well- paying jobs, It also explains something about the nature of unemployment among the " disadvantaged,

THE PROBLEM OF UNEMPLOYMENT / 125

124 / THE UNHEA VENL Y CITY REVISITED

There is no lack of jobs in the secondary market; unemployment l cities, he says, could employ hundreds of thousands more of the poor, among secondary workers is mostly voluntary and temporary; they frequently move from one job to another , from work to public assistance or " the hustle " and then back to work. Their problem is not inability to find a job but inability to find and keep - a " good" job , meaning one in the primary market, From the standpoint of policy, there are two possible approaches to the situation. One is to change the secondary worker or the employer s perception of him

so as to make him employable in the raise

primary market. The other is to improve the secondary job wages , give training, offer chances of advancement.

Federal manpower programs have followed the first approach, Some have tried to change workers ' traits and others to increase their skills, but none has had much success with secondary workers, Allowing for exceptions , these workers have merely been circulated from one secondary job to another.58 The other approach conversion of secondary jobs into primary ones has not been attempted. Doeringer and Piore say that it is probably possible to stabilize most but not secondary jobs and build into them the career ladders, skill levels, and wage rates characteristic of primary jobs. "59 (This in fact happened to a considerable extent , they say, with longshoring and unskilled construc-

all-

tion work since the Second War). Raising the minimum

wage

although objectionable on other grounds , would contribute to this , but the most successful instruments , Doeringer and Piore believe , would

probably be ones that would operate indirectly

for example

changes in social security and workmen s compensation laws, a tax on labor turnover , and the enforcement of anti discrimination legislation. In Education , Training and the Urban Ghetto Bennett Harrison

contends that " planned job development" should be " the

central

especially if they relaxed unreasonable hiring standards such as those which make persons with arrest records ineligible for jobs. Local government jobs , he points out, pay from one to three times more than ghetto " families earn in the secondary market, account of, the Such policy prescriptions overlook , or take little the secondary worker and the secondary

characteristics of both

characteristics that (as Harrison observes) seem to benefit both G2 If the undesirable features of the job are part of workers and firms, an adaptation to the life style of the worker, it is hard to see how they can be much changed unless the life style of the worker is changed first. Even under favorable circumstances this is likely to be a slow process, uncertain in its outcome, " The problem of instability and poor work habits among adult workers, " Doeringer and Piore write "63 has generally evaded solution, To such objections it may be responded that if sufficiently good jobs are offered by employers who make a serious and sustained effort to recruit from the secondary market and who allow the recruits a

job

reasonable period of time in which to adapt to the requirements of

their new situation, a considerable number

of the

workers-

successfully. although of course not all- will make the transition

This is certainly plausible , but problems remain. Even though subsidized, an employer may not be able to meet his competition (perhaps from a " tertiary " labor market abroad) if the habits of the workers slowly. Presumably recruited from the secondary market change too public employment would impose a looser discipline than private and would also allow the worker a longer period to adjust. It is far from places is such as clear , however, that the political reality in most would permit employment of a considerable number of additional

workers who, by the standards applied to incumbents and by com-

good" jobs. It

program element in a strategy to reduce urban blight , poverty, underemployment , and pathology, "60 The focus of effort , he says, should be

parison with other applicants, did not qualify for "

to get employers to offer good wages ,

training, and chances of advancement to workers in the secondary labor market. He would

standards which Harrison deplores are more common in public than

have the federal government give capital subsidies to secondary employers in order to facilitate the " upgrading " of jobs and he would also have a much-enlarged program of public employment. The large

governments, acting as employers of last resort offer jobs considerably better than those now available to secondary workers, many primary as well as secondary workers would want

may be indicative of these realities that the unreasonable hiring in private employment.64 If local

, were to

126 / THE UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED

them, If all applicants were employed , the costs would be huge and

the transfer of workers from private to public employment exert a strong inflationary pressure. 65

As a practical matter

would

, however

appropriations would never suffice to employ all applicants , and in all likelihood many, if not most , of the jobs would go to workers whose opportunities were relatively good to begin with, The most " disadvantaged, " it is safe to say, would stand jobless at the end of the public queue, Nevertheless , a case can be made for subsidized employment on a limited scale, 66 The special task force of the Department of Health Education, and Welfare which prepared Work in America while acknowledging " the sad truth, , , that for some we can expect nothing more than low- level employment " concluded that a guaranteed job program would do more to strengthen the family and reduce

dependency than a guaranteed income program. Assuring opportu-

nity for the central provider to work full- time at a living wage report says

, the should be the first goal of public policy, "67 William

CHAPTER SIX

Several Kinds of Poverty A condition of chronic poverty is developing in the Jewish community of New York that is appalling in its immensity, Forty- five percent of our applicants, representing between twenty thousand and twenty- five thousand human beings, have been in the United States over five years; have been given the opportunities for economic and industrial improvement which this country affords; yet, notwithstanding all this, have not managed to reach a position of economic independence, United Hebrew Charities Annual Report for 1901

Fellner , in a paper published just before his appointment to the Council of Economic Advisers , recommended subsidies for workers

(presumably heads of families) whose

prolonged unemployment

would entail hardship, Subsidized employment ,

he remarked ,

is

preferable to subsidized idleness by means of ' welfare ' type payments, 68 John Kain , in testimony before the Joint Economic Committee , proposed that employers hiring workers certified by the employ-

ment service to have been unemployed for a long period receive an the longer the period of unemployment the larger the subsidy. 69 The reader will recall that , according to a Census r~port cited in Chapter One , there were in 1970 only 82 000 persons in the " poverty areas " of the 51 largest cities who had been hourly cash subsidy

unemployed as

long as six months, That this " hard

core

unemployment problem in the cities is small in terms of numbers of people does not mean that it is easily solved , however. Quite possibly many of the workers in question would remain unemployed even if employers were enabled to pay them high wages at public expense.

HE city, far from being a cause of poverty, has proved to be a remarkably efficient machine for transforming it into prosperity and even affluence, For many generations the world' s " wretched refuse " (as the inscription on the Statue of Liberty puts it) has been coming to live in the city, One would expect that after so many years of immigration , incomes in the city would be much lower than anywhere else, In fact , the median money income of families and unre-

lated individuals is about the same in the central cities of the large (over one million population) metropolitan areas as in the United States as a whole ($10 100 as against $10, 285 in 1971), although considerably less, of course , than in the suburban fringes ($ 12, 696 in 197 I), The city s remarkable performance would be even more clearly evident if, so to speak, the books were kept on a more meaningful if the city were credited with the incomes of all persons basis

brought up in it and not debited with those of persons who grew up elsewhere, By counting the millions of suburbanites who attended city schools and got their feet on the first rung of the occupational ladder

SEVERAL KINDS OF POVERTY / 129

128 / THE UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED

in the city and by omitting the other millions of persons of farm and rural origins ,

whose earning capacity was already largely fixed when they migrated, the city s role as destroyer of poverty and creator of

wealth would be dramatically revealed, The city attracts the poor especially poor parents with numerous children - by offering better conditions of life better food, clothing, shelter , health care , schools , and treatment from employers and officials; this is why it always has so many poor. I The problem of poverty in the cities is seldom of the cities ' own making; it is essentially a problem made elsewhere and then brought to the city, Rural migrants who move to cities , especially large ones, reap substantial economic gains. Typically the migrant's earnings are much less before his move than are those of city- born persons of the same race , age , sex , and education, but it takes him only about five years to catch Up,

federal interagency committee in 1969 adopted a " poverty index " reflecting various consumption requirements of families based on family size , sex and age of family head, number of children , and farm-nonfarm residence. Each year , after taking into account changes in the Consumer Price Index, a poverty line (" low income threshold"

is derived from the index. In 1972 the poverty line was $4, 275 for a nonfarm family of four and 24, 5 million Americans were considered poor. Of these , 3, 8 million lived in central cities where they comprised 16 percent of the population and 2, 3 million lived in suburbs (strictly speaking, outside of central cities but within metropolitan areas) where they comprised 8 percent of the population, Poverty was disproportionately frequent among Negroes, the old , and persons not members of households (" unrelated individuals " in Census terminology).

There is no doubt that these figures considerably exaggerate both the number of persons having low incomes and the lowness of their incomes, People in general have a tendency to underreport their

incomes either because they do not remember accurately what they

receive or do not tell the .Jruth about it, (The Current Population Survey finds public assistance payments underreported by at least one- fourth and income from property by more than one- half, Also

there is reason to believe that if income from illegal activities were

reported, a considerable percentage of the " poor " in some of the large 4 Even when properly reported, cities would turn out to be well-off). income money , for only the official figures misrepresent the situation

is counted and most of the poor now receive substantial amounts of for example , food stamps , housing, and Medicaid, income in kind Moreover , every survey catches some people when they are receiving less than their normal income, (Thus , in 1960 it was found that in the large cities consumers with incomes under $ 1 000 were spending 000 $224 for every $100 of income and those with incomes from $2, )5 If incomes were measured over a to $3, 000 were spending $ 116, two- year period there would be many fewer poor. Turnover among the poor is rapid: one- third per year. There are also sizable differences in the cost of living from one city to another: an income of $3, 000 will buy as much in a small city as will, say, $2, 500 in a large one , which means that the number of the poor may be understated in large cities and overstated in small ones, Most people who live in large cities would prefer to live in smaller ones; therefore some of what they earn is really compensation not for work but for putting up with the unpleasantnesses that they find in big-city life, 6 Obviously the drawing of a poverty line involves making a good many rather subjective judgments, One economist , using the

same figures as the Council of Economic Advisers, cut its estimate of from 20 percent of the population to the amount of poverty in half 10 percent.7 A more fundamental question concerns the

definition

of poverty,

According to the dictionary, " poverty " is lack of money or material poor is " poor How possessions, But how severe a lack? , it will be useful to distinguish four degrees of For present purposes sufficient to assure which is lack of income destitution poverty: physical survival and to prevent suffering from hunger , exposure , or want which is lack of enough remediable or preventable illness; " (as distinguished from comfort essential welfare income to support " which is lack of enough to prevent acute Iwrdship, and convenience);

persistent discomfort or inconvenience, In addition, a term will be relative used to designate a kind , as opposed to degree , of poverty: deprivation

is lack of enough income , status , or whatever else may be

130

THE UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED

valued to prevent one from feeling poor in comparison to others, The official poverty line obviously does not refer to destitution although even half a century ago destitution was not uncommon, (It was estimated that in New York at the turn of the century, one person in ten was buried in Potter s Field an indication of widespread distress, since " lying in a pauper s grave " was a disgrace most people would make almost any sacrifice to avoid, 8) Today, however , it is probably safe to say that no one in the city is destitute, Many persons still suffer from hunger , exposure , or illness but lack of income is not the cause , or at any rate not the proximate cause , of their suffering, A cultural (or other) incapacity to make use of income is a

different matter from lack of income ,

, the amount

Measured by this standard, or by one anything like it of want in the city has been steadily reduced decade by decade for at least a century, There was still considerable want twenty or thirty years ago, but today there is very little, Within another few decades there will almost certainly be none, If no one goes hungry, very few inadequate; as have (for reasons of income) diets that are nutritionally long ago as 1955 the poorest third of city dwellers ' average consumption exceeded the National Research Council' s recommended dietary allowances for eight of nine nutrients: Recommended Nutritive value of diets of allowance per lowest income third in cities

and destitution (as defined

here) has to do with income, One might suppose , then, that the poverty line refers to want. The Council implies this by characterizing the poor as " those who are not now maintaining a decent standard of living those whose basic needs exceed their means to satisfy them, "1O It is very difficult to specify, even for food , the minimum " bundle " of goods necessary to

support essential

welfare, It is impossible to state precisely the indispensable material prerequisites of individual happiness and

social well- being, However, although the contents of the bundle might

vary a good deal from one country to another and from one age to another , within a given culture and a given age the variations would not be very great. " Basic needs " do not change much from one generation to the next (if they do, they are not " basic !); neither does a culture s idea of what constitutes a " decent " worthy, respectable etc" mode of life, Therefore , want can be defined by a standard that changes so slowly as to be for all practical purposes fixed, One laid

down by Alfred Marshall almost a century ago will serve rather well today:

The necessaries for the efficiency of an ordinary agricultural or of an unskilled town laborer and his family, in England , in this generation, may be said to consist of a well- drained dwelling with several rooms , warm clothing, with some changes of underclothing, pure water , a plentiful supply of cereal food , witl1.;l moderate allowance of meat and milk, and a little tea , etc" some education , and some recreation , and lastly, sufficient freedom for his wife from other work to enable her to perform properly her maternal and household duties.!1

131

SEVERAL KINDS OF POVERTY

70 8 1. 10 1.2 7 2, per person per day,

900 2, Protein grams Calcium grams . Iron (milligrams)000 8, Thiamine adult male

Energy value

cals. 2,

Vit. A value I.U. 5,

1955 b

910

Riboflavin 1, Niacin 19,

16-4

700

1.42

Ascorbic acid 70. 0 94. aNational Research Council, Food and Nutrition Board,

17-4

Recommended

Dietary A llowances 6th revised edition, 1964.

bU, S. Department of Agriculture Dietary Evaluation of Food Used in

Households in the United States

(Household Food Consumption Survey,

1955), Report #16, Table 19, p, 30,

Almost everyone has enough warm clothing; few people live in

, or otherwise housing that is greatly overcrowded, structurally unsafe injurious to essential welfare; all children can have not only a high

school education but (assuming that the Basic Opportunity Grant program passed by Congress in 1972 is fully implemented) higher education as well; books and records are easily obtainable (one can

buy almost any book of general interest , including all the classics, for the price of a couple of packages of cigarettes); every city has a public library and the larger ones also have museums, art galleries, adulteducation classes, and so on, 13 The About health in the city it is somewhat harder to generalize,

132 / THE UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED

SEVERAL KINDS OF POVERTY / 133

distribution of most important diseases seems to have nothing to do with income, Occupationally caused injuries are probably more fre-

Pi'/'SO/1.\'

quent on lower- paid jobs; these tend to result from conditions not

Hospitalized pi'/' 1 000 Population 196816

Low income

obvious to an observer , such as stress or repetitive work , rather than from well- defined hazards like dust , presumably because safety precautions are normally taken when hazards are identified, Probably because their ailments more often interfere with their daily activities the poor more often than others perceive themselves as ill

(under $ 5, 000) Middle income

($5, 000-$9, 999)

000)

(over $10,

Physician Visits per Capita,

more likely to delay going to a physician or hospital until a condition has become serious, the result being that their chances of complete recovery are poorer. Neither income nor education has more than a

Low income

very minor role in the likelihood

Middle income

of disability (however , factors

services, A national survey in 1970 for the Department of Health cities low-

residents aged 18 to 64 were slightly more likely to have income seen a physician in the survey year than were others in that age group,

Low- income children and the low- income aged in the central cities saw physicians somewhat less often than did higher income persons in

their age groups ,

but this reflected inability to obtain the service,15

household demand rather than

The poor make more use of public clinics than do others , and most

clinics give competent diagnoses

and treatment for

plaints, although their atmosphere -

bureaucratic

specific com-

hurried , impersonal , and

tends to discourage treatment that goes

beyond a

specific complaintP Clin~Jreatment , however , is a minor part of the

total received by the poor: three- fourths

of their contacts are with

private physicians at home or in the physician s office

1969

($5, 000-$9, 999) High income

(over $10, 000)

by the

poor are good, Even before the establishment of Medicaid , the publicly financed program of health care for the poor , low- income families were getting as much hospital care as higher income ones , and there is now hardly any relation between income and use of physician and Welfare showed that in central

81.8

(under $5, 000)

correlated with income , especially the characteristics of jobs , have an important influence); the single most important factor in determining the overall disability rate is residence in a rural area,

Education ,

95-4

High income

, something

that probably results in a higher rate of reporting of their illnesses, But although the poor are more aware of their ailments , they are also

In general the amount and quality of health care received

114,

the same

proportion , incidentally, as among the well-off, About the quality of the care provided for the poor it is of course hard to judge, Measured the use of specialists the poor are less well by one indicator served; however, there is reason to believe that schooling has as much infant mortalto do with this as does income, Another indicator shows no consistent relationship between income and mortality ity in white families when parents ' schooling is taken into account; in income and schooling appear to make a differboth black families, ence,

Contrary to what one might expect , the health of the poor does not show a marked improvement when as much , or even more , is spent on it than on the health ofthe better-off.18 This may be explained in part

by the fact that even good medical care has less effect on health than is generally supposed, (Environmental factors have more influence on mortality rates than does medical care; if education and expenditure on medical care are held constant , the higher the income the higher the mortality rate, 19) Life styles associated with income- and probprofoundly influence health, ably more significantly with schooling Diet , number and spacing of children , and accident proneness, for

SEVERAL KINDS OF POVERTY / 135

134 / THE UNHEA VENL Y CITY REVISITED

example , are all affected by life style

and all in turn affect health,

high school , but they cannot go to

college unless they are good

Health services, no matter how effective " an authority concludes cannot solve the problems of the impoverished slum dweller, "2O By way of illustration he cites the inability of visiting public health nurses

scholars or athletes; they will usually be adequately cared for in if they are illness serious case of illness -,-- especially in case of services and facilities that are willing to avail themselves of the

to persuade Puerto Rican mothers to bring their preschool children to child- health clinics. Another observes that a high proportion of indigent Negro mothers are " walk- ins " who have babies often under-

available to them,

weight and retarded

without having availed themselves of pre-

natal instruction or care.

Although the poor are in better health and receive more and better health care than is generally supposed , the consequences of serious illness are clearly much worse for them than for others, Medicare Medicaid, and other federal medical benefits to people in families with incomes under $5, 000 amounted to about $6, 5 billion in 1970

(somewhat less than half of the

total of all such benefits), 22

but although these benefits cover most out-of- pocket costs of illness, loss of work days and restriction in

work activities

entail a larger

well-off. With all outof- pocket costs met from public subsidies , illness or premature death may nevertheless impoverish a family, In view of this , health proproportional loss to the poor than to the

grams may be less useful in relieving the consequences of poor health among the poor than would vocational rehabilitation or cash transfers of income. If one is willing to live just above the level of want that is, having enough for essential welfare, but not enough to avoid hardship one can do so now with little effort, In Marshall' s time the

Most of those who report incomes below the poverty line are not

undergoing hardship - not , at any rate , because of poverty, Among households with incomes under $5, 000 in metropolitan areas in 197 I

42 percent owned their homes, half owned at least one car, nearly 90 percent at least one television set (I 1 percent of the sets being color ones), 75 percent had a washing machine, 27 percent a clothes dryer, 22 percent a freezer, and 21 percent air conditioning in at least one room,

Discomfort and inconvenience ,

real as they are for a great many

people, are probably not the most frequent or important, elements in what is generally experienced as poverty, Having less than others may and feel- poor even if one is well-off by any make one appear objective standard, This sort of poverty is not new, of course. Karl Marx remarked upon it: " A house may be large or small; as long as the surrounding houses are equally small it satisfies all social demands , the little for a dwelling, But if a palace arises beside the little house "24 To a considerable extent , the present- day house shrinks into a hut. poverty problem " is of this sort; houses have shrunk into huts and other things have shrunk also, In short, the problem is less one of income

level

than of income

distribution,

As Victor R. Fuchs

explains:

unskilled laborer had to work from dawn to dusk merely to escape destitution. Today, because of economic progress , technological improvement , and various welfare measures , an unskilled laborer is

By the standards that have prevailed over most of history, and still prevail over large areas of the world, there are very few poor in the United States today, Nevertheless , there are millions of American families who

not likely to suffer want if he works only a few hours a day and he may not suffer it if he does not work at all,

both in their own eyes and in those of others, are poor, As our nation prospers , our judgment as to what constitutes poverty will inevitably

Most of those classified by the Council of Economic Advisers as poor do not experience want. Their poverty may entail hardship, but it does not entail serious injury. They can afford nutritionally adequate diets but not the better cuts of meat; their clothing is warm and plentiful but not " the latest thing ; their housing keeps out the rain and the cold, but the bath is down the hall,; their children can finish

When we talk about poverty in America , we are talking about families and individuals who have much less income than most of us, When we talk about reducing or eliminating poverty, we are really talking about (italics added) , changing the distribution of income change,

Fuchs goes on to define as poor " any family whose income is less " By this standard, which than one- half the median family income.

SEVERAL KINDS OF POVERTY / 137

136 / THE UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED

refers to relative rather than absolute deprivation , the number of poor people - 36 million - was the same in 197 I as in 1963, 2(; It should be kept in mind , however , that in principle the number of poor so defined could actually increase even if everyone were well above what

upon the operation of long- term demographic trends, From 1900 to 1940 , for example , the dependency ratio (persons under age fifteen or over sixty- five per hundred of all others) fell sharply (from 62, 6 to 46, 8), in the next twenty years rose sharply (to 67, 6), and has since

is usually meant by the poverty line, That the

declined and is expected to remain fairly constant (at 55 to 60) to the year 2000, The other way of redistributing income is by " transfer payments that is, by taxing some and giving to others. This, of course, is done on a large scale: federal spending on social welfare programs amounted to an estimated $ 10 I. 7 billion in 1973, almost 40 percent of all federal expenditures, Most transfer programs, however , were

relative

position of the

lowest- income group has not improved is a significant fact, but it is to

be accounted for not by the continued distress of some so much as by the rapid rise of others into the larger proportion of skilled and demanding jobs that are an inevitable accompaniment of rapid economic growth,

On first impression the poverty problem may not seem very difficult to solve, Even if no special measures are taken , the amount , poverty (in the sense of incomes below the poverty line as now officially defined) will gnidually decrease until twenty- five to fifty years hence there will very likely be none at allP If one is unwilling to wait that long, all that is necessary (so it may seem) is to redistribute income: in a society as affluent as ours there will be enough for

everyone if the total is distributed properly, There are essentially two ways of redistributing income, The first which is altogether preferable so far as it goes, is to increase the productivity and earning power of those who are poor. This might be

done by measures some of which have already been discussed

maintaining a very high level of employment , pricing labor at what it

is worth so that all of it will be employed , improving workers ' skills health , and geographical mobility, and ending discrimination in jobs (and , of course , in housing) on grounds of race , age , sex , class, amount of schooling, or whatever. These measures , however , would not eliminate poverty no matter how far they were carried; their direct and main effect is on employable persons and , although nearly three- fourths of all poor families have at least one earner , many cannot possibly be affected by changes in the job market. The poor always include disproportionate numbers of the old , young, disabled , mothers with dependent children , and members of certain minor,ity groups, The amount of poverty at any

given time therefore depends to a

considerable extent upon the

proportion of dependent people in the population

which is to say,

not intended to relieve poverty (unemployment insurance and oldage retirement, for example, were enacted on the assumption that most people would normally earn enough to keep out of poverty), and in 1966, the year for which figures are most nearly up to date, only about half of all benefits went to the poor. These brought slightly more than half of the aged (over sixty- five) poor above the poverty

line but only 19 percent of the others; of families headed by nonwhite women, 62 percent remained poor after the transfers,

A method of transferring income that is simpler and would reach the poor and only the poor is the " negative income tax, " This plan, which economists all along the political spectrum have endorsed, calls

for all families (" income units ) to file federal income tax returns; those reporting incomes below the poverty line would then receive a payment from the government to make up part or (if the rate schedule

the view of Milton In were sufficiently generous) all of the deficiency, Friedman, the first active promoter of the idea , all the poor could be brought above the poverty line with total transfer payments much smaller than those presently made , provided that few people stopped working once ' they were assured of some minimum income and provided that the negative income tax were regarded as a substitute for, his opinion, the In not an addition to, most existing welfare programs, savings would amount to more than tWice the cost of the negative income tax itself. The plan has the added advantages , he argues, of minimizing interference in the allocation of resources by the market and of making explicit the cost of transfers to any particular income group, :Jo

" "

138 / THE UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED

In 1969 the

" "

139

SEVERAL KINDS OF POVERTY

Administration proposed a Family Assistance

Plan

On theoretical grounds, one would expect the disincentive effects

(FAP) which was to begin with (complications were introduced in the course of the effort to get it through Congress) essentially a negative income tax, albeit one limited to families with children, :H Und~r the plan as first proposed, a family of four would be guaranteed income of $ 1 500 per year; this would increase with family size ($450 per adult and $300 per child) up to a family of seven , which would be

of a guaranteed family income to be of increasing importance as one moves from the high to the low end of the class-cultural scale. Upperand upper-middle- class people often find intrinsic satisfaction in their ement , self-expression, work, To them work is a means of self- improv " Such

guaranteed $2,400, For every $ I of earnings or other income that the

family received, its payment would be reduced by 50 cents, Thus a family of four with an income of more than $3, 000 would get no payment whereas one of seven with an income of $4, 000 would get $700, Although the House accepted F AP , the Senate did not. A revised proposal was reintroduced in the Ninety-second Congress , but it also failed in the Senate, In 1972 Congress did, however , enact a guaranteed annual income for the disabled, the aged, and the blind, All methods of redistributing income by transfer payments are open, although not in the same degree , to the objection that they may weaken (or destroy) incentives that are desirable in the interest of the individual and of the society and may strengthen (or create) others that are no less undesirable, No one knows, for example , what the

effect of a guaranteed family income may be on the willingness of people not only to work but also to save , to learn new skills, and in general to make provision for the future, Even the most carefully

controlled experiments will not yield reliable predictions of these effects if for no other reason because the effects will not all be apparent until a new generation has grown up under the new circumstances, As Michael K, Taussig has pointed out , the United States has had more than thirty years of experience with the programs enacted in the Social Security Act of 1935; two of these , Aid to Families with

Dependent Children and Old Age Assistance,

have , he remarks,

apparently financed a dramatic revolution in the American family structure " and have led to the " isolation of new , virtually separate sub societies " (he refers to persons aged sixty- five or more and to mothers with dependent children , most of whom are black), Is it likely, he asks, that well-

stesigned experiments before 1935 would

have predicted these effects? Taussig s answer is: No,

and " service ; sometimes it is " exciting,

. satisfactions exist

fun,

a game,

, but to a relatively small degree , in the work of the

lower-middle and the upper-working classes, For the lower-working , one works only class they amount to very little: in this subculture lower class, work is most dissatisfying

because one has to, In the because of the discipline it entails; the lower- class person prefers near- destitution without work to relative abundance with it. The evidence (such as it is) seems to confirm these expectations. Highto now at least income earners have been found not to be - up 33 On the other hand much deterred by the prospect of higher taxes,

some low- income earners seem to be very sensitive to disincentives. That they will not work when welfare payments are as much or more than they could earn is to be expected, of course, However, it also

appears that many poor persons

will not put forth effort to get

, while extras " once they have been assured of a level of living which enough, extremely low , seems to them to be " ' greater the The higher the floor that is put under incomes, the 34 A minimum

number of workers who will see no reason to work, income at or slightly above the present poverty line might induce many working- and middle- class people to lower substantially their level of living for the sake of not working, To the extent that living standards are thus reduced , the cost of eliminating poverty will be

tremendously increased; conceivably, it may be more than even a very rich society can afford, It may seem possible to avoid the disincentive problem merely by refusing to give a minimum income to anyone able to work. Most of

the poor would still qualify, since a large majority are in families headed by mothers, or by persons disabled or too old to work, The difficulty, however, is that it would be outrageously unfair to give generous support to dependent families while supporting meagerly or including about 30 percent of the poor not at all families

:!!;

140

THE UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED

which the head works full time, There is ,

SEVERAL KINDS OF POVERTY

141

up to at least half the median income no one would be thought poor. It is certainly conceivable , however , that even then people with incomes to them~elves , the problem of balancing work incentives for those who are able to work below, say, three- fourths of the median might seem as poor as those with incomes under half the median against the needs of those who cannot. A guarantee level that is adequate to or to others income used to seem, In principle , the subjective significance of the needs of those who cannot work may tempt some workers to drop out of as a recent Brookings

Institution report points out

the labor force or at least to reduce their effort. Allowing people to keep a sizable fraction of their earnings should encourage work, but it also means that benefits go to people with substantial earnings, which sharply increases the cost of the program, For example , if the guarantee was $4, 000 and benefits were reduced only by one dollar for each three dollars earned families with incomes up to $ 1 2, 000 would get some benefits, :!5

Why, it may be asked, should anyone care

so long as society can

afford it if many able- bodied people are supported at some minimum-acceptable level of living without their having to work or to worry about the future? That it is unfair for some to " ride free at the expense of others is one answer to this question but a rather minor one, (It must be remembered , too , that if it is unfair for the poor to live without working, it is also unfair for the rich to do so more so , in fact , since they live better.) Another answer is that the level of living of those accepting the minimum will almost certainly be lower than it otherwise would be and lower than is socially desirable, The major lesson in the British experience seems to be that fIatrate schemes, whatever the original intention, end up at the subsistence level forcing the system to depend on a combination of insurance and welfare,

Still another consideration is that , generally speaking, the experience of not working and not taking responsibility for oneself and for one family s welfare weakens not only personal character and happiness but also the family itself and perhaps other institutions upon which the welfare of society depends, 37 Indeed , it is arguable that any income maintenance scheme will offer incentives both to have more children 38 and to split up families, A serious difficulty exists insofar as it is relative deprivation that constitutes poverty, It is jlsually assumed that only great inequalities of income make people feel poor in this sense, Victor R. Fuchs , in the article that was cited above , assumes that if all incomes were brought

differences may increase steadily while the objective

size of the

differences decreases; this process may continue right up to the point (assuming that there is one in

some meaningful sense) of income

equality, In other words, it is at least possible

that the closer they

come to income equality the more acutely dissatisfied people with relatively low incomes may feel on account of such differences as remaIn, This possibility is not as remote as it may seem, The poor today are not " objectively " any more deprived relative to the non poor than they more feel were a decade ago, Few will doubt , however, that they , this being that they perceive the gap to be wider and that deprived the case , it is wider in the sense that matters most, By constantly

calling attention to income differences, the War on Poverty probably engendered and strengthened feelings of relative deprivation, This subjective effect may have more than offset whatever objective reduction occurred in income inequality,

Finally, it may be that poverty in the sense of relative deprivation is only incidentally related to a lack of material things, and that there-

fore even " equality " of income (whatever that may mean) would leave as before, This e., feeling deprived as many people " poor s comments on the conclusion is implied by some of David Caplovitz income consumers he studied, They bought conbehavior of the lowsole phonographs, color television sets, and so on, he says, in order to

- i,

embellish" their social status; having failed to move up the social ladder , they " compensated" by climbing symbolically through consumption of such things, 4O If he is right , no amount of income

redistribution can reduce, much less eliminate , their poverty: it con-

sists not of lack of income, but of lack of

status,

Indeed, the more

far-reaching the income redistribution, the more painfully apparent it may become that such symbols as color television sets cannot provide

real" status, If what the poor

really want is a reduction of the

extremes of status inequality, then income redistribution, however

" "

" "

THE UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED

142

SEVERAL KINDS OF POVERTY

all comprehensive , cannot help much, If they want the elimination of status differences, then nothing can help, " Poverty, " writes Lester C. Thurow is a dispersion or variance , problem; thus, it falls into the

category of economic problems for which there is no known solution. "41 There is another kind of poverty, however.

' Robert Hunter

described it in 1904:

They lived in God only knows what misery. They ate when there were things to eat; they starved when there was lack of food, But , on the whole although they swore and beat each other and got drunk , they were more contented than any other class I have happened to know, It took a long time to understand them. Our Committees were busy from morning until night in giving them opportunities to take up the fight again, and to become independent of relief, They always took what we gave them; they always promised to try; but as soon as we expected them to fulfill any promises they gave up in despair , and either wept or looked ashamed, and took to misery and drink again - almost , so it seemed to me at times, with a sense of relief.42

In Hunter s day these were the " undeserving, unworthy, depraved, debased, " or " disreputable" poor; today, they are the troubled culturally deprived hard to reach chronically, " or multiproblem, "43 This sort of poverty reflects not only lack of money

but also, and especially, the pattern of tastes, attitudes, and habits that , according to the hypothesis advanced in Chapter Three , results from extreme present-orientation and is the life style of the lower class,

Outside of this lower class, poverty in the sense of hardship, want or destitution is nowadays almost always the result of external involuntary unemployment , prolonged illness, the circumstances death of a breadwinner , or some other misfortune, Even when severe such poverty is not squalid or degrading, Moreover , it ends quickly once the (external) cause of it no longer exists. Public or private assistance can sometimes remove or alleviate the cause for example , by job retraining or remedial surgery, Even when the cause cannot be removed, simply providing the nonlower- class poor with sufficient income is enough to enable them to live " decently.

143

, as has Lower- class poverty, by contrast, has as its proximate (but been stressed, not its remote or ultimate) cause ways of thinking and behaving that are , in the adult, if not elements built into personality, at least more or less deeply ingrained habits, In large degree it is inwardly " caused, and improvements in external circumstances are likely to affect it gradually if at al1.44 Poverty of this type tends to be " family is no self- perpetuating: one problem of a " multiproblem , it is possible to sooner solved than another arises, In principle eliminate the poverty (material lack) of such a family, but only at

great expense , since the capacity of the radically improvident to waste

money is almost unlimited, Raising such a family s income would not necessarily improve its way of life , moreover, and could conceivably even make things worse, Consider, for example , the H, Family: Mrs. H. seemed overwhelmed with the simple mechanics of dressing her

six children and washing their clothes. The younger ones were running around in their underwear; the older ones were unaccounted for, but presumably were around the neighborhood. Mrs. H. had not been out of the shopping. The

house for several months; evidently her husband did the apartment was filthy and it smelled. Mrs. H. was dressed in

a bathrobe,

although it was mid-afternoon. She seemed to have no plan or expectations with regard to the children; she did ' not know the names of their teachers and she did not seem to worry about their school work, although one child had been retained one year and another two years. Mrs. H. did seem to be somewhat concerned about her husband' s lack of activity over the weekhis continuous drinking and watching baseball on television, end Apparently he and she never went out socially together nor did the family ever go anywhere as a unit.45

say, $50 000 a year " case, Mrs, H, would culture ()f poverty would not be considered a "

If this family had a very high income

hire maids to look after the small children, send the others to boarding schools, and spend her time at fashion shows while her husband drank and watched TV at his club. But with an income of only moderate they would probsay 100 percent above the poverty line size

ably be about as badly off as they are now, They might be even worse off, for Mrs, H, would be able to go to the dog races, leaving the children alone , and Mr. H, could devote more time to his bottle and TV set.

SEVERAL KINDS OF POVERTY / 145

144 / THE UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED

Such families constitute a small proportion both of all families in the city (perhaps 5 percent at most46) and of those with incomes below the poverty line (perhaps 10 to 20 percent). The problems that they present are out of proportion to their numbers , however; in St. Paul Minnesota , for example , a survey showed that 6 percent of the city families absorbed 77 percent of its public assistance , 51 percent of its health services , and 56 percent of its mental health and correction casework services, 47 Moreover , their misery is (or at least seems) far the garbage-strewn , rat- infested greater than that of the other poor hovels with toilets out of order are now almost exclusively theirs, Giving them income or services, even in rather larger amounts, is unlikely to reduce and may even increase their poverty, Welfare agencies, recognizing the difference between " internally and " externally " caused poverty, have long been trying first by one means and then another to improve the characters or , as it is now put, to " bring about personal adjustment" of the poor. In the nineteenth century, the view was widely held that what the lower- class individual needed was to be brought into a right relation with God or (the secular version of the same thing) with the respectable (that is , middle- and upper-class) elements of the community, The missionary who distributed tracts door to door in the slums was the first caseworker; his more often , her task was to minister to what today would be called " feelings of alienation, The stranger, coming on a stranger s errand, becomes a friend, discharging the offices and exerting the influence of a friend, , , ,

Secularized , this approach became the " friendly visitor " system under which " certain persons, under the direction of a central board pledge themselves to take one or more families who need counsel , if not material help, on their visiting list , and maintain personal friendly relations with them. "49 The system did not work; middle- and

upper-class people might be " friendly, " but they could not sympathize , let alone communicate , with the lower class. By the beginning of the twentieth century the friendly visitor had been replaced by the expert. "50 The idea no~~~as that the authority of " the facts " would

bring about desired changes of attitude ,

motive ,

and habit. As it

happened, however , the lower class did not recognize the authority of

the facts, The expert then became a supervisor , using his (or her)

benefits in order to force the poor to do the things that were supposed to lead to " rehabilitation (that is, to a middle- class style of life), 51 This method did not work power to confer or withhold material

either; the lower class could always find ways to defeat and exploit the system. They seldom changed their ways very much and they never changed them for long, Besides, there was really no body of expertise

changes desired, As one caseworker has remarked in a book addressed to fellow social ser-

to tell caseworkers

how to produce the

vice professionals: Despite years of experience in providing public aid to poor

families

precious little is yet known about how to help truly inadequate parents make long term improvements in child care , personal maturity, social relations , or work stability,

Some people understood that if the individual' s style of life was to be changed at all , it would be necessary to change that of the group

that produced, motivated , and constrained him. Thus , the settlement

house, As Robert A, Woods explained early in the present century: The settlements are able to take neighborhoods in cities, and by patience

bring back to them much of the healthy village life , so that the people shall again know and care for one another. , , ,

When it became clear that settlement houses would not change the culture of slum neighborhoods, the group approach was broadened into what is called " community action. " In one type of community action (" community development ), a community organizer tries to persuade a neighborhood' s informal leaders to support measures (for instance ,

measures for delinquency control) that he advances,

54 In

another form of it (" community organization ), the organizer tries to promote self-confidence , self-respect, and attachment to the group (and, hopefully, to normal society) among lower-class people, He attempts to do this by encouraging them in efforts at joint action, or by showing them how to conduct meetings, carryon discussions, pass resolut~ons, present requests to politicians

, and the like. In still an-

other form (" community mobilization to arouse the anger of lower-class persons against the local " power ), the organizer endeavors

149

SCHOOLING VERSUS EDUCATION

particularly, whether the kind of schooling possible under existing

for instance , the intelligence of children, their class circumstances culture , the state of the art of teaching, the character of the teaching

is capable of producing the desired effects. possibilities for The view to be taken in this chapter is that the improving the city by reforming its schools are sharply limited, Even if the schools were to do much better those things that it is possible for profession, and so on

CHAPTER SEVEN

Schooling versus Education DEAR ABBY: I took my freshman year over again and I am still a freshman, In other words, I failed everything again, I admit I fooled arou nd the first time, but I really tried to make it this time, but the work was too hard for me, My parents don believe me, They think I let them down, but I really tried my

best.

I would like to quit school and go to a trade school, but my father says I have to graduate from high school if it takes me 10 years, What can I do? - ASHAMED

of the them to do, the result would not change the main features schools of the situation in the city, Nothing that can be done in the central city can significantly affect the movement of the well-off to age the suburbs or

much reduce

the amount of poverty or teen-

inescapable unemployment, Nothing done in them can provide that " foundation of respect and self-respect" which, according to the HARYOU manual , would reduce racial unrest and social disorganireforms most likely to be zation in general. On the contrary, the especially requiring more chilmade in the name of " education

dren to spend more time in school-

may be expected to produce

results exactly the opposite of those intended; that is, hasten the movement of the

~E most widely recommended " solution" to the problems of the

city is more and better schooling, There is almost nothing that

someone does not hope to achieve by this means, City planners see it

sufficient condition for bringing the middle class back into the city from the suburbs, Almost everyone

as a necessary and perhaps

(except economists) thinks that the unschooled will be unemployable in the automated society of the future and - a non sequitur that schooling will prevent unemployment. Since it can be shown statistically that the least schooled have the lowest incomes, schooling is also thought to be a cure for poverty and thus , indirectly, for the slum and the " ghetto. " A proper system of education , the HARYOU manual says , is " an inescapable foundation for the reality of respect

and self-respect. . . and the basis for the type

of vocational and

academic adjustment essential for an effective life, . . , Education is, of course , a good thing, and no society can have too much of it. What must be questioned , however , is whether " schooling " and " education " necessarily imply one another and, more

well-off from the city, increase unemployment

apathetic.

and poverty, widen the chasms of class and race, and plunge deeper angry or into apathy, or stir

into fiercer anger, those already

There is little doubt that , in general , boys and girls who graduate from high school find better jobs and find them faster than do boys , or that those who and girls who do not graduate from high school have two or three years of high school find better jobs than those who 2 The more high school one has , the less unemp.oyment have only one,

one is likely to suffer in later life and the greater one

s lifetime

Economists have calculated that on the average the individual who finishes high school gets a very high rate of return on his investment of time (represented by what he might earn if

earnings are likely to be.

he went to work), Reviewing the growing body of economic studies Theodore W, Schultz of the University of Chicago concludes that

the private (as opposed to social) rate of return on

. elementary and secondary schooling has been

investment in

rising for several de-

cades and is now " upwards of 100 percent" for elementary and close to 30 percent for secondary schooling (the high school data are for

~.

150 / THE UNHEA VENL Y CITY REVISITED

SCHOOLING VERSUS EDUCATION / 151

white , male graduates after personal taxes); for higher education and how much to learning something else. Herbert A. Gintis, an (these data , too, are for white males), the rate of return has been economist, has concluded from his empirical studies that stude ~ts ~re constant over time at about 15 percent, 3 He points out that the figures penalized for creativity, autonomy, initiative, t?~era~ce for ambIgUIty, are all bIased do~nwar? in that they do not take any account of the. and independence and are rewarded for d?Clht~, mdustry" and ego personal that IS , nomncome-returning satisfactions that people control. The function of the school , he thmks, IS both , to mculcate get from their schooling over the course of their lives. these traits and to habituate the student to a system whl~h separates Early studies along these lines dealt only with whites. When the rewards (grades and the like) from the intrinsic satisfac~lO~ of work ~)ltahst ,work1960 Ce~sus mad ~ comparisons possible , it was reported that black (learning) " thus reproducing rather faithfully the ca males wIth very lIttle schooling earned about one- fourth less than. environment, "7 One may, of course , agree that the mculcatlOn of comparable whites and that black college graduates earned less than these and other attitudes is indeed the main effort of the school and half as much as ~~ites, Subsequently, a mo~e discriminating analysis yet place an entirely different valuation ~~ the outcome, In c:e and educatlOnof the, data by, Fl ~lS Welch showed that whlle returns from schooling m many cases Thomas Sowell remarks that , Economics were mdeed sIgnIficantly lower for blacks who had entered the labor as such is not crucial for doing the Job, but the gen~ral set of force in the 1930 S and 1940 S they were significantly higher for those and habits (his emphasis) exhibited in behavlO toward attitudes who had entered it in the 1960 4 In Welch' s view , this " vintage education may be very important factors in one s capabilIty and eff~t" c?ul? ~ot ~e explained as the result of a sudden decrease in reliability as a worker. favor more InequalLty, racial , dlscnmmatlOn; for one thing, the relative return to black Employers, Christopher Jencks writes m even when there are no oo~mg had begun to improve in the mid- 1930 , long before the educated (schooled?) workers over less CIVIl fIghts revolution , and for another , the " vintage effect" extended significant differences in their productivity because the emplo~ers ~ls to whites, His conclusion the only one that seemed to him to fit " need a legitimate device for rationing privilege. " Wage differentl these facts ---: was that the quality of schooling has been improving " could" meet this need, but , for reasons Jencks does not expla and that the Improvement has been most striking in the schools at- employers use educational credentials which " serve the pur ~ose q~lte

"8

tended by blacks. well.

"9 Although it is

private

ones that Jencks seems to be dlscussmg,

That ear ~ings rise sharply with years spent in school does not prove his analysis has much more application to public empl~yers. ~s was that schoolIng ~auses them to rise, Other factors, such as IQ or family pointed out in Chapter Five, the pay . sc ~les of publIc bo~les ~re back ground , mIght account largely or even wholly for differences in affected by political considerations; ratlOnmg by n ~neconomlc ~r lteearnIngs, In recent years many analysts have struggled to get rough ria is therefore usually unavoidable for them : It IS not s~rpnsmg, measures (the best that could be hoped for) of the importance of therefore , to find that a laundry Bennett Harnson compl ~ms of for ~~chool factors. Apparently " ability " (except for mathematical requiring beginning, inexperienced workers to have hIgh school abIht~) acco~nts for n~ more than 10 percent of the returns that are diplomas is publicly operated and pays not an . hourly wage bu~ an asso~lated wl ~h schoohng; 5 on the other hand, " family background" annual salary of $3, 600 (plus substantial penslO ~ and other f~mge (socIOeconomIc status) seems to account for between 25 and 50 benefits, no doubt). Rather than impose a pomtless educatIOnal percent of the m; the, schooling of the mother is a " family background" requirement of this sort , a privately operated laundry would surely factor of partIcular Importance, ration privilege " by paying less. , Wh~tever the contribution of schooling to later earnings, the ques- Among private employers, " credentialism " is m?st hkely , to e ~Ist tIon anses, as to how mo.'ch of it is attributable to learning the subject where there is monopoly (enabling the employer to mdulge ?IS preJumatter whIch the school IS endeavoring to teach (" cognitive " learning) dices without loss of profit) or where the scale of the enterpnse makes

6 "

lO

152 / THE UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED

SCHOOLING VERSUS EDUCATION / 153

credentials a cheap screening device, As Daniel E. Diamond , a labor training, But much work does not require more , and investment in a result in an economic loss to those who enter economist , explains , the tests used are sometimes useless or even high school diploma can worse as indicators of performance , but as the example he cites certain occupations, shows the private employer is not likely to rely upon them There is every reason to try to persuade the would- be or toexclusively. (If he makes that mistake , his place may shortly be taken manual laborer to get as much education as he can for his own enby a more efficient competitor something that would not happen to joyment later on. But there is no reason to encourage him to stay in a public employer who did the same thing, ) According to Diamond: school on the pretext that he will acquire skills valuable to him as a Rebellion in High Stinchcombe remarks in There is evidence that employers often fail to test whether a particular laborer. As Arthur School: requirement or set of requirements are justified by the actual job to performed. For example , one of our graduate students, utilizing statistical'. analysis , studied the relationship between hiring requirements and job Is there anything that a high school can teach which employers of manual , the performance of bank tellers in a large New York City bank. The bank gave labor would be willing to pay for, if it were learned well? In general answer is no, Neither physical abilities nor reliability, the two main varieach job applicant a battery of psychological tests, High test scores were influenced by ables of interest to employers of manual labor, are much interpreted as evidence of potential success as a teller and low scores securing reliable workers may evidence of potential failure, Fortunately for the bank, the test scores were schooling. Employers concerned with not used as an automatic screening-out device; although some applicants

undoubtedly were denied employment because of low test scores, Discriminate analysis showed that there were no significant relationships between test scores and success on the job, Indeed, some of the test scores correlated negatively with job performance.

If the job market is slack, private employers may give an automatic preference to high school or college graduates, Even if the work g., in a laundry could as well be done by a " functional illiterate an employer will probably prefer a graduate when he can have him at Such a choice is not, as Jencks is inclined to think capricious rather than rational; "12 a diploma may reasonably be regarded as evidence of some sort of achievement; or more realistically perhaps lack of one , at a time when almost all young little or no extra cost.

people finish school , may give the employer cause to wonder if there may not be " something wrong " with the boy or girl who dropped out.

Presumably, the enormous amount of propaganda directed at actual and potential dropouts by school authorities and by officialdom

in general proceeds from the assumption that jobs require more formal education now than they did a generation or two ago and that every additional year of schooling will make a boy or girl that much more employable. The cGnclusion makes sense for students who are going into such work as medicine , which does require more technical

require high school diplomas as evidence of good discipline, Otherwise they can train workers better and cheaper than a high school can, on the job,

It seems clear that " success " in later life does not require as much is genachievement in school (not to mention time spent there) as that students erally supposed, Jencks is certainly correct in remarking by no who leave school reading at the eighth or ninth grade level are " means unemployable nor are they excluded from the main stream

of American life, "15 This can be seen from the careers of people of

such low intelligence that they cannot have learned much in school.

Such people often do about as well as " normal" ones in the job market. A sociologist in Connecticut compared the job experience of a group of " mentally deficient persons who had graduated from the " with that special class for slow learners in the regular public schools of a control group consisting of persons who had started first grade at the same time and had passed through the school system in the regular way. The two groups were approximately, matched.

as to age , sex,

' IQ'

nationality, religion, and father s occupation, but the subjects ranged from 50 to 75, whereas those of the controls ranged from 75 upward, After interviewing each subject in 1948 and again in 1960,

the investigator concluded: " The overwhelming majority of both subjects and controls had made acceptable and remarkably similar " The adjustment in all three areas: personal, social , and economic.

, "

, , ,

SCHOOLING VERSUS EDUCATION / 155 154 / THE UNHEA VENL Y CITY REVISITED

controls $

economy is to

Contrary to popular opinion, the tendency of the intellectual ability of require less rather than more knowledge and 102, 50, More than a fourth of both groups had been on the Black Education many

median weekly earnings of the subjects were $88, 50,

those of the

same job for twelve years. None of the subjects earned exceptionally large salaries; a few of the controls did, Employers rated the subjects~ somewhat less favorably than the controls on almost all criteria, The subjects also were less likely to have savings accounts, checking In most reaccounts , or telephones, or to own their own homes, the differences in the investigator concluded, spects , however economic measurements between subjects and controls are insignificant,

, , ."16

It is safe to say that if the subjects in this study had been known to the employers as " mentally retarded" they would not have gotten their

jobs in the first place, Indeed, " mentally retarded" persons are generally to be found in institutions, and the reason in most cases is not that they are innately incapable of working but that public opinion

simply takes it for granted that the " retarded" cannot work and should be institutionalized, " Normal" employees suffer loss of selfesteem when they work alongside known retardates; knowing that the perhaps almost as well as they can retardate can do what they do makes it hard for them to take pride in their work, But if the do it

retardate is not known as such , the problem does not arise, There are societies in which more than half the population would be " retarded"

if retardation were defined in the usual way by an IQ score, They

manage quite well, however,

because they lack a concept of

retardation; in the nature of the case , the percentage of those seriously handicapped by lack of

intelligence in competition with others is

small, But when , as in our society, retardation is defined in terms of an objective test and the retardates ' alleged incapacity is made known to all , the number of retardates is thereby enormously increased and their chances of leading normal lives enormously decreased, It is because our society is rich and wasteful- and because it is too that it defines ~ much on the lookout for ways of " doing good" millions of people with IQ' s between 50 and 70 as " retarded" and needing help " (thereby implying that they are not employable and

probably ought to be institutionalized) and hundreds of thousands who have not seen fit to spend twelve years in school as " dropouts (thereby implying that they, too, need help and will be of little use to society and to themselves unless they get it).l8

" There is

most people, As Thomas Sowell remarks in

jobs " are becoming

simpler

to the point of boredom, that most jobs are beyond the

certainly no indication, he says

intellectual range of anyone above the level of mental retardation, Indeed, for many jobs the trainable mentally retarded have been found to do not only a competent job but often a better job than persons of average intelligence, Some firms which use mental tests to screen job applicants have secretly established upper limits for those they will hire, having learned from experience thatbecome individuals above bored and a certain intellectual level are more likely to careless, " 19 Measures to reduce unemployment and poverty by increasing the

skills of workers through schooling can have only a very limited success, They cannot change the situation fundamentally; probably

the best they can do is to hasten somewhat the movement up the job and income ladder of people who would movetrained" up it anyway, worker and an A distinction should be made between a " how to perform educated" one, The trained worker has to learned operate a machine, say, certain tasks of more or less complexity or to keep accounts, Training may mean acquiring certain manual dexterities, mastering some body of facts, or learning to apply a set of defined limits, The rules or to exercise discretion within some well, (I) possesses the educated worker , by contrast

kind of general will help

knowledge, especially of reading and mathematics, that

him to solve various new problems, and (2) has certain traits of especially motivation to achieve, ability to accept the character discipline of a work situation,

willingness to take the initiative and employers,

to accept responsibility, and ability to deal fairly with

fellow-employees, and others, Training may be given entirely in school or on the job, Education, on the other hand, cannot be wholly acquired in either place, Someand of (especially in reading what it takes to make a worker educated and is mathematical knowledge) can only be learned from books

or perhaps one should say would be where boys and best learned there if the school is, in fact, a place character that are

usually best learned in schoolgirls generally try to learn;

but the traits of

SCHOOLING VERSUS EDUCA

156 / THE UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED

noN / 157

equally a part of education are not learned in school- or at any rate customers: the two activities could be organized as separate jobs, If For the most part , they are acquired in employers would program work for low-capability workers in the ' job childhood, manner that they program it for computers, the workers The lower- class person cannot as a rule be given much training opportunities would be vastly increased, They are not likely to do so because he will not accept it. He lives for the moment , but learning to however , so long as minimum-wage laws, union practices, and social perform a task is a way of providing for the future. If the training prejudices compel them to pay more for low-value labor than it is find ways to replace if it is process is accompanied by immediate rewards to the trainee worth, Instead, they will do the opposite may low-capacity workers with high-capacity ones and with machines. the lower- class person fun " or if he is paid while learning accept training. But even if he does , his earning power will not be s class culture is to much increased, because his class outlook and style of life will genTo say that the school cannot change the child' erally make him an unreliable and otherwise undesirable employee, deny that it can serve what many believe to be its principal purpose, Besides , the ability to perform tasks (that is, to do what he has been The schools, many people think, exist to liberate the child from the his would trained to do) is seldom a very rare or valuable commodityo He moral and emotional as well as intellectual- of confines horizons for him, increase his earning power greatly if he became educated (as opposed earliest environment and to open higher " and " helping him to to trained); to have in high degree and in combination both general . . , (A) wakening the child to cultural values education and the traits of character mentioned above is rare and adjust normally to his environment, " the Supreme Court said in the decision, ) No child is more in valuable. Unfortunately, however , the lower- class person acquires in famous Board of Education v, Brown childhood an outlook and style of life completely antithetical to need of liberation than the lower- class one, and therefore it is thought instrumentalities education, or at any rate should be that the schools are The lower- class person presents the extreme case: it is all but for drawing this child into the larger, freer, more productive world of impossible to increase his employability by training, With the lower normal culture as well as for encouraging and facilitating the move-

not there more than elsewhereo

child into the middle class

and the

working class the difficulties are the same in kind but less in degreeo

ment of the working- class

There are also many persons who, because of racial prejudice or other externally imposed handicaps, are taken to be lower or lower working class when in fact they are not. Their abilities, motivation, and traits

middle- class child into the upper class, This seems to be what is meant inescapable foundation for when it is said that schooling provides an " 0 and the basis for the type of the reality of respect and self-respect, , vocational and academic adjustment es:;ential for an effective lifeo

of character are such that they can be trained to perform tasks and perhaps educated to hold down skilled jobs. Most such people would find ways of getting the training or education somehow even if there were no schools , but not all of them would , and in any case there is much to be said for measures that may speed up the processo That the problem of the low-capability worker can be solved in this way is too much to hope for, however. Much more might be accomplished by altering jobs to fit the limitations of workers than vice versa, 20 The principle of specialization could be applied so as to make the low- intelligence and even the lower- class worker much more employable than he is at present. Cutting meat , for example , need not involve dealing with

~

This is why it is generally held that , both from the standpoint of the individual and of the society, it is impossible to have too much of the schools to prepare schooling, And this is why the inability thousands of boys and girls for skilled (or even semiskilled) work and for responsible citizenship and adulthood is counted against them as a failure and is taken as a portent of social decay and collapse, This idea of what the schools should do contrasts with the 21strangely According to this account sociologists give of what they do in fact, account, the school does not liberate the child from hisit class culture thickens the but instead confines him in it even more securely

walls that separate him from the rest of society, The child has

SCHOOLING VERSUS EDUCATION

158 / THE UN HEAVENLY CITY REVISITED

159

have to take absorbed the elements of his class culture long before reaching school; , Those who plan to drop out " usually assume they willacceptable to jobs evidently seem more what the school does is to " socialize " him into it more fully and to low-status jobs, But such class children, make him more aware of the differences that separate him and his working-class students than to most upper-middlethe educational attainment kind from others. The child has " picked up " from parents and play- This suggests that if we want to equalize backgrounds, we will prob-

mates an outline map of his universe , it

the continents, so to speak

and the main features of

cannot be changed by anything

that is said or done in school. At best , teachers can only help the child to fill in certain empty spaces on the map he brings with him to school.

map is extremely crude or wildly inaccurate , teachers and textbooks can be of little help, Nor can they help very much if it is drawn in symbols that are incomprehensible to them, (Working- class Italian-American children studied by Gans in Boston s West End were not adept at manipulating concepts or at handling the reasoning processes in texts and lessons; instead, they were sensitive to people used words not as concepts but to impress people , and stressed the If the

anecdotal and the episodic

all of which led to learning difficulties in school.22) In extreme cases (that is, those presented by lower- class children) not much filling- in of the map is possible , and the little that is possible must take place in the street rather than in the school.

How , it may be asked , can this claim that the school furthers the

socialization of a child into his class culture be reconciled with the familiar fact that in America the schools are and always have been a principal vehicle of upward mobility? The answer is that the children who are stimulated into mobility in school are ones whose initial class culture permits or encourages perhaps even demands mobility, The more nearly upper class the child' s initial culture , the more susceptible he is to being " set in motion " by the school. At the other end of the continuum , the lower- class child' s culture does not even recognize - much less value the possibility of rising or , rather , of doing those things, all of which require some sacrifice of present for future gratification , without which rising is impossible, The lowerclass child' s conceptual universe lacks the dimension of time; in such a universe people rarely try to change things. Even if he does not enjoy it , a middle- class child , Jencks remarks, expects that he will have to stay in school for a long time, By contrast children with workIng-class or lower- class parents evidently assume that if they dislike school they can and should drop out,

of children from different economic

ably have to change not only their "23 test scores and financial resources, but also their attitudes and values, class child (and in lesser The circumstances that prevent the lowerclass one as well) from acquiring in school degree the lower-workingthe traits of character that contribute to education prevent The him compute also adequately, from learning how to read, write, and inadequacy of his preparation in the earliest years imposes fourteen, age ofa handicap that schools cannot overcome later on, By the unteachable, according to Basil Bernstein, many such children are " it only

Keeping them in school does not add to their knowledge; 24 For the child

damages their self-respect ,

which is already small.

encourage upward mobility, schooling very whose class culture often has the broadening and liberating effects that it is supposed to , , , education is but one of many have, But even for these children, " does

factors influencing mobility, and it may

be far from a dominant

factor , "25

conspicuous differClass-cultural factors largely account for the ence between the slum and the suburban school. Each school has a class character imposed upon it by the social setting in which it exists; inequitable this, and not staff inefficiency, racial discrimination, or provision of resources , is the main reason for the virtues of one and

find

the defects of the other. The implication is one that, dedicated, reformers and to wit , that no matter how able hard to accept hardworking the teachers, no matter how ample the facilities of the free the school or how well- designed its curriculum, no matter how , the peratmosphere of the school from racial or other prejudice class-cultural scale will formance of pupils at the lower end of the always fall short not only of that of pupils at the upper end of the workers. scale , but also of what is necessary to make them educated ' class-cultural It is tempting to suppose that even when the pupils or other disadvantages are severe they can be overcome by a school

whose resources are ample and which employs the best practices in

, "

" "" "

SCHOOLING VERSUS EDUCA

160 / THE UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED

the right combination, Some efforts have indeed been followed by better pupil performance and presumably caused it. None has proved to be generally applicable ,

however, and even the most comprehen-

sive programs have yielded little or no measurable benefit, Consider for example , what happened in a typical lower- income school in central Newark

the Cleveland school.26

In a period of about six

years the Victoria Foundation added $ I million to its regular budget and the Board of Education also gave it extra funds, Innovations were planned largely by the teachers, They included supplementing the regular staff with " project teachers " in subjects like science , speech , and remedial reading and with " helping teachers " to assist the less experienced; starting a prekindergarten program; placing heavy emphasis in all grades on reading ability and using a variety of approaches to the teaching of reading; continually examining and refurbishing the curriculum; giving students practice at taking stan-

dardized tests; tripling the capacity of the library and adding

a

full- time librarian; providing comprehensive medical and dental services; enlarging the cultural horizons of the children by field trips , an

after-school club, an Afro- American program , assemblies dealing with black history and other efforts to build the self-esteem of the children, almost all of whom were black; establishing a Social Service Center with five full- time professional social workers to provide

services for children who needed them; starting parent groups to encourage their involvement; and employing a school psychologist, Such a program might be expected to work if anything would, but after six years an evaluation revealed that the children were doing little if any better than before, Tests made each year in the third and sixth grades of the Cleveland school and in the same grades of two very similar Newark schools showed that the program had little or no effect on reading or IQ score, The Cleveland students did get slightly higher grades (the difference was about one- third of a grade) than the controls when they reached junior high school. This, the evaluators speculated , might mean that they had gained not academic but " social

adjustment skills cues for successful classroom behavg" deference to tea hers , discipline , orderliness, and so on) - a hypothesis that was supported by the fact that the Cleveland students did no better than the controls in math , a subject likely to be graded purely on the basis of performance, iot (e.

noN

161

Whether anything was accomplished with all the money, time effort, and dedication appeared doubtful to the evaluators, Even with the assumption that the small differences in junior high school grades " it was questionable indicated gains in " social adjustment skills,

whether these skills would last and, if they did, whether they would help much in the larger world,

The lack

all such of success (to put it mildly) of almost

the problem

compensatory efforts does not by any means prove that " , however of the slum school" is insoluble, It does strongly suggest arrangements is likely to

that no amount of tinkering with present

produce any significant results, , not The conclusion is supported (and, so far as the author is aware contradicted) by a vast outpouring of studies, The best known these 000ofpublic and the largest (it involved some 645, 000 pupils in 4, schools) was made by James S, Coleman and several associates for the

S, Office of Education and published in 1965 under the title

To his own and everyone

Equality of Educational OpportunityP

else

s surprise

, Coleman found that not only were differences in

school resources (facilities, curricula , and staff) within school districts they more important not as great as had been supposed but ' achieveexplained relatively little of the wide variations in pupils " the school was unimporment. As compared to " family background, family background, tant. And of the several variables constituting " variation in one pupils ' attitudes, " accounted for more of the achievement than all of the others together and also more than all of the school-related variables together. Among the three pupil attitudes Good luck is measured was sense of control over the environment (" Every time I try to get more important than hard work for success, People like me don t have ahead, something or somebody stops me, ); pupils in the groups having much of a chance to be successful in life American, the lowest average achievement

Puerto Rican, and American Indian

Negro, Mexican-

---:- related more strongly to this

Coleman found

variable than to any other , a circumstance which particularly impressive because this attitude has no direct logical relation to achievement in school or to ability, other Coleman s data have since been extensively reanalyzed byelaboinvestigators, 28 and numerous new studies, some of them very achievement in school. rate , have been made of factors influencing

162

SCHOOLING VERSUS EDUCATION / 163

THE UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED

strong evidence for Two separate groups have subjected this avalanche of research (as one If all elementary schools were There is no report calls it) to critical scrutiny, One , led by Harvey A, Averch of closed, white middle- class chil- or against the proposition that the Rand Corporation , prepared a report for the President's Commis- dren might still learn much of the characteristics of his peers student's performance sion on School Finance on How Effective Is Schooling?29 The other, what they now know (p, 87), But affect a there is no led by Christopher Jencks of the Graduate School of Education at most poor black children would (p, 43), In particular,racial comHarvard University, covered some of the same ground in a more probably not learn to read with- evidence that the position of a student body affects ambitious inquiry into the causes of inequality in American society, out schools (p, 88), the student's performance (p, The first half of the book by Jencks and his associates, Inequality, essentially a review and analysis of others ' findings about the effects If all elementary schools were 43), of schools on pupils ' achievement. equally effective , cognitive in' experience and adIt is not possible here to summarize systematically the principal equality would decline less than Teachers basic facconclusions of these two works, still less to note the ifs, ands , and buts 3 percent among sixth graders; vanced degrees, two salaries, are tors determining that they attach to many of them, It will be useful , however , to if all high schools were , it would

paraphrase (in some instances actually to quote without quotation marks) some of their conclusions that are of special interest in the present context, It should be emphasized that this is a winnowing from two works each of which is a winnowing from hundreds of other works, A verch

Children with affluent parents

The socioeconomic status of a

want more education than chil-

student's family his parents income , education, and occupation invariably prove to be

even

when we compare those with the same test scores and grades (p, 140),

at all among

significant predictors of educational outcome (p, 148),

There is no correlation between what a high school spends and its attainment

(p, 148),

The evidence

does not

suggest

that doubling expenditures would raise students' performance on

standardized tests (p, 93),

are undoubtedly major determi-

involves socioeconomic as well as racial desegregation (p, 100),

difference between working- class and middle-class students ' aspi-

nants of achievement level(p,

rations (p, 140),

88),

we will

higher test scores only if it

eVi-

There is little doubt that major determinants of learning style

We can find no convincing dence that racial desegregation affects students' eventual attain-

155)'

Increasing expenditures on traditional educational practices is not likely to improve outcomes substantially (p, 155),

The large surveys of the large compensatory education pro-

and

1,

Headstart

Follow Through) have

shown no beneficial results on the average (p, 125), Two. or three

smaller surveys tend to show

modest and positive effects in the short run (p, 125),

There is little probability of sig-

ment (p, i55),

nificantly improving

niques, more educational

probably have to changs,pot only their test scores and financial re-

and ability are fixed in the early

sources, but also their attitudes

environment plays a dominant

If we compare ninth graders with

and values (p, 141),

role (p, 9 I),

similar aspirations, test scores,

life of the individual

beeither(p,

grams (ESEA Title

Desegregation is associated with

economic backgrounds ,

related to student

achievement (p, 155), Reduc-

tion in class size does not seem to

Perceived pressure from home seems to explain most of the Student attitudes and motivation

If we want to equalize the attainment of children from different

not closely

twelfth graders (p, 255),

impact on students '

Jencks

dren with poor parents,

hardly decline

and that

classroom

performance through the development of new instructional techex-

164

THE UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED

SCHOOLING VERSUS EDUCATION

165

advantaged" penditures , or changes in the, others, When infrequent viewers were compared, the " disadvanbureaucratic structure of the were found to have gained more from watching than the " taged, " There was no way of telling whether the effects on any of the education attended high schools schools , given the present limitainstead of which spent less money than tions of knowledge and current children will be lasting, but , if they are Sesame Street average , had worse paid teachers institutional constraints of the decreasing inequalities, may increase them, which It is plausible to suggest that the attitudes and motivations and had larger classes (p, 149), school system (p, 146), have been found associated with pupils ' achievement (or lack of it) are related to the tim~ horizons of the class cultures, One would Trial and error seem to be the Research offers little guidance as only way to answer most prac- to what educational practices expect a present-oriented person not to have as much sense of control over his environment as a future-oriented one , for example; similarly tical questions about the causes should be adopted (p, 155), luck" rather than one would expect him to be more likely to trust " and cures of cognitive inequality hard work. " (Coleman mentions, as a striking result of his study, that (p. 76), response scored ninth- grade Negroes who gave the " hard work" The " avalanche " of research appears to support the view that what higher on the verbal achievement test, both in the North and the the pupil brings to school in the way of attitudes and motivations South, than whites who gave the " good luck" one , and this although 8 years (class culture , in large part) influences his success there , as measured the average Negro scored (in different regions) from 2. 7 to 3, The Consequences of by standardized tests, more than do the practices of the school. If this behind whites, 31) As Alan B. Wilson remarks in is indeed the case , so long as present practices are followed increased Segregation: Academic Achievement in a Northern Community, investment in schools will do little or nothing to help the low achievFor some students the future is real for the very reason that they have a ers, Indeed , unless an increase is made only in the classes attended by , a fact repeatedly brought home to them by the school system, This future the low achievers something that is probably politically impossible , because those with a link to the future strengthens the bond to the present it may be expected to benefit mainly the children of the middle and future have something to lose by deviant activity, This orientation to the upper classes because by and large it is they who are most disposed to :. future is reflected in concern for present academic performance, Students learn. who think good grades are important , for example, are likely to be future How hard it is to get around this problem may be seen from the oriented, They are also less likely to commit delinquent acts, experience of Sesame Street the educational television program funIf the view taken here is correct , there would seem to be a class begun in 1969 which reaches seven million preschool children for one the lowerdamental incompatibility between the outlook of hour a day. The intention of the program was (and is) to help offset school, which is (as pupil, who is present-oriented, and that of the the handicap of " disadvantaged" children in the poverty areas of the Bernstein has written) " an institution where every item in the present cities by teaching certain skills, When the Educational Testing Service no is finely linked to a distant future , and in consequence there is made a survey, it found that about half of the children in its sample class serious clash of expectations between the school and the middlewatched the program four times a week or more, The children who child. " The lower- class child, by contrast, watched it often showed improvement in the skills that it was designed and economic backgrounds, we find those who got the most

to improve , and the amount of the improvement was about equal for disadvantaged" and " advantaged" children. However , the " advantaged" children (who , olcourse , had more of the skills in question to

begin with) were much more likely to watch it often than were the

is concerned mainly with the present; his social structure, unlike that of the middle- class child, provides little incentive or purposeful support to make the methods and ends of the school personally meaningful. The problems of discipline and classroom control result not from isolated points of resis-

167

SCHOOLING VERSUSEDUCA TION 166

THE UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED

tance or conflict but from the attempt to reorient a whole pattern of perception with its emotional counterpart.33

Cloward and Jones describe the American situation in much the same terms:

Our system of education places a strong stress upon doing rather than being, upon a future orientation rather than an orientation toward the

, upon the notion that man is superordinate to nature rather than in harmony with it or subjugated by it , upon the notion that

present or the past

man is flexible and plastic and capable of change rather than that he is acquired'

essentially, and perhaps immutably, evil. A child who has not these particular value orientations in his home and community is not so likely to compete successfully with youngsters among whom these values are implicitly taken for granted,

The implication is that the school must adapt to the mentality of the The methods and lower- class child if it is to be of use to him, problems of teaching need to be thought out almost as though midBernstein says. 35 Others think that it dle- class children do not exist," class child a choice between a middle- class

learns is not improvident, undisciplined, and so on, But what he knowledge that could be taught in school even if everyone agreed that it should be. No one would write it down in books (for to do so would " knowledge), no one would require a large measure of " middle- class teach it (a lower- class teacher would not come to work regularly and classroom if he or she did), would not have anything to teach in a class pupil is poorly disand no one would learn it (for the lowerposed toward learning anything). only mean giving no Giving a " lower- class education " can , can be done better on education at all , and this , one would suppose , it is pointless to try to teach the street than in school. If, for example , it is pointless to try to teach him English at the child correct English all. The only system that will not favor the child at the upper of class childend from the class-cultural scale is one that frees the lowereducation favors the middle- and All having to go to school at all.

class is to have

upper- class child, because to be middle- or upperqualities that make one particularly educable. class character Perhaps critics who attack the school for its middle-

strenuous enough effort were made to avoid

really mean that if a , it might be possible is unfair to offer the lowerconfusing and humiliating the lower- class child , the , for example education and no education at all. Cloward and J ones to get him to try climbing the educational ladder. On this view to favor children who ~re t say that the system should not be organized " "36 school should not only avoid the unconscious snobbism of theclass middle in socialized in one rather than another part of the social structure. class but ought also to make some pretense of being lower- him. schools to However, the only way to avoid this is to organize some give what may be called a lower- class (in contradistinction to a middle- or upper-class) education - an education for those who want , and who are to be rather than to do, whose verbal ability is very low , presumably, is the not motivated to learn, This notion of fairness

order to put the child at his ease and to establish contact with school's class character but This approach is not really to change the is: Will it only to seem to do so. The question that must be asked gifted teachers but with most work, and not merely with a few

teachers? That it is highly desirable not to offend or humiliate the

, which in the nature basis for complaints about the fact that teachers are almost all midchild goes without saying. But whether the school class) dle-class and for objections to the efforts of the schools to teach (as opposed to lowernever have f of things must be an expression of normal who will class) English to children , or could accomplish anything by correct (middleculture , can pretend not to be that to the

occasion to speak it, Apparently, the idea is that to be fair , and , books lower- class child , the schools should give him teachers

subject matter appropriate to a lower-class education. The trouble with this idea , however , is that a lower- class education is a contradiction in ter ms; lower-class culture is the attitudes and behavior patterns of people who have not been educated at all. To be sure , a child " learns " this culture in the sense that he learns to be

so doing, may well be doubted. Such evidence as there is suggests s handicap is that too class child'

by the time he reaches school, the lower-

firmly fixed to allow of its being significantly reduced by anything the

school might do. There is much evidence that children learn fastest in the earliest

years of life. By the age of four , according to one account, general

168 / THE UNHEA VENL Y CITY REVISITED

SCHOOLING VERSUS EDUCATION / 169

the next fourteen schools runs as high as 50 percent , and it would enable nonlearners years; a poor start in these first years means that the child is likely to to leave without being stigmatized as dropouts, fail throughout his school career no matter what the school may do There are at least three compelling reasons for getting nonlearners later on to help him, out of school. The first is to stop what one educator has called the further process of " anti-education " in school and thus to prevent ' self-respect and further lessening of their These findings make it plausible to suppose that if the school is to ' injury to the nonlearners society, As matters now stand, the educate the lower-class child as well as the others who make up the regard for the institutions of the that must be ridiculous to boys who will schoolone ill-defined category " disadvantaged, " it must start very early in his or pretense of the soon start having babies her life. Preschool programs (which in 1971 enrolled 44 percent of be manual workers and to girls who will " is surely one cause of youth children aged three to five in metropolitan areas) apparently do not that it and it alone offers " opportunity since the start early enough; at any rate , whether for this reason or for some unrest. The boy who knows that he has learned nothing other , the initial gains of those who participate in them are soon lost, eighth grade but that he must nevertheless sit in boredom, frustration, (in a few states Indeed , children who participate in Headstart and other compensa- and embarrassment until he is sixteen or seventeen will be labeled " dropout, " must be eighteen), when finally he tory programs frequently make slower progress than those who do not. According to the V, S, Office of Education s fourth annual report profoundly disaffected by the experience, He senses that the school authorities and the whole apparatus of middle- and upper-class opin(published in 197 I) on the huge ($ 1 billion annually) program under ion that confine him there neither understand nor even care about the Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, Participants in the compensatory programs (not many of which were most palpable realities of his situation: that he will very likely work with his hands all his life , that he is not learning anything, that for nursery schools , to be sure) continued to show declines in average

intelligence has developed as much as it will in

yearly achievement in comparison to nonparticipants who included advantaged and nondisadvantaged pupils, , . , "39 It was not possible

from the data , the report adds , to tell whether the decline in average achievement was greater or less than in previous years. It would be premature to conclude that efforts to overcome the handicap of " disadvantaged" children must start almost from birth if the children are to succeed in school. This will be discussed at some length later (in Chapter Ten), albeit only in reference to the lower class, It will be seen that on this question , as on most others of importance , experts disagree, Since the schools are not teaching much to many children after ninth grade , it would make sense to lower the normal school- leaving age to fourteen , giving a diploma on completion of nine rather than twelve grades and (as a comment by Jencks suggests) allowing a child of any age to earn a diploma by passing an equivalency examination. 4o This would not"reduce the amount of free schooling available to those who are able and willing to learn , but it would eliminate the efforts almost wholly futile to stop truancy, which in some

such work he would not be helped by learning any more, and that one

who works with his hands had better start early because he will be old" by the time he is forty, To tell such a boy that he must stay in school anyway because in the future there will be no jobs for people

with only hands is to tell him something that is both untrue and irrelevant. If he cannot learn, staying in school will not help, and if there are no jobs for people with only hands, supporting him will be society s problem, not his, Rebellious behavior, Stinchcombe concluded from his study of a and to its high school, " is largely a reaction to the school"41itself The suggestion promises, not a failure ofthe family or community, s anger is that much juvenile delinquency originates in the adolescent' at the stupidity and hypocrisy of a system that uses him in this way, The later the school- leaving age, the more involved with delinquency the school will be, As Martin Trow has written: The growth of educational opportunity threatens to make the greater social

part of terminal education in high schools coincidental with the

problems of juvenile delinquency, This is not to say that every classroom

SCHOOLING VERSUS EDUCA

THE UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED

170

noN

I7 1

going students is or will be a " blackboard jungle. " It

That many lower- class pupils are also black complicates the school

does mean that the hostility toward the school characteristic of the juvenile gangs , but much more widespread than their membership, will be an increasing part of the educational problem faced by schools and teachers dealing with terminal students.

problem in a tragic way. Increasingly since 1960 the ideology of the civil-rights movement has tended to justify and thus reinforce the

The school's involvement with delinquency may become greater as the school- leaving age is delayed , not simply because there are then more students of an age to be delinquent (which is what Trow seems to mean) but also because having to stay in school after learning has stopped is itself a cause of delinquency. In Britain , the Crowther Committee reported that when (in 1947) the school- leaving age was raised from fourteen to fifteen . . . there was an immediate change over in the delinquency record of the thirteen- year-olds (who until

though those classes have little or no

full of non-college-

then had been the most troublesome age group) and the fourteenyear-olds , who took their place in 1948 and have held it consistently

ever since. "43

Presumably what happened was that fourteenyear-olds , upon confinement in school , became more delinquent than fourteen- year-olds had been before. If so , one may conjecture that if they were to be confined still another year or two or three (as they are in most states of this country), they would become even more troublesome. Boys , especially working- class ones , frequently want to leave

school for the very practical reason that changing their status from schoolboy " to " worker " will give them independence and even a certain prestige at home. If not permitted to leave , the boy who finds the " schoolboy " role intolerable may replace it with membership in a youth gang or other delinquent subculture. Indirectly, then , the school may be a factor generating delinquency.

The frustration , anger , and contempt for authority engendered by

the school may possibly enter into the personality of the individual coloring his attitudes in adulthood and leading him to take a cynical and resentful view of the society and all its works. Conceivably, the

practice of forcing the incapable and unwilling to waste their adolescent years in schoolrooms further weakens the already tenuous attachment of the lowe~classes to social institutions. The discovery

that the school consists largely of cant and pretense may prepare the way for the discovery that the police and the courts , for example , do too.

pervasive Negro s resentment of the white; this has had a subtle but classes, even

effect on the attitudes of the black working and lower interest in the ideology of equality or of anything else. Since 1964 (the year of the white first riots) the " school growing " black power " movement , by accusing the " " against black children and by system of practicing " mental genocide , has dramatized forcibly demanding " community control" of schools for black pupils the idea that whites are to blame for everything and that they, the pupils

, ought to show their resentment by learning possible for their white

nothing while making life as miserable as teachers. Not all black schoolchildren have been infected by the contagion of these ideas, but enough have been to make it doubtful point of view even those sympathetic to the militant. that whites

successful in the inner-

can in the future be even moderately

city schools. school second reason for getting nonlearners out of the opportunities to give them seem paradoxical though it may

and incentives to learn. Not everything worth learning must be (or , and not everyindeed can be) learned from books and teachers learns better one

not even everyone with a

first-rate mind

from books and teachers than from other sources. Educators tend to overlook this, since they have a professional interest in booklearning and have been self-selected into their occupation on the basis of an aptitude for it. To be sure , some of the boys and girls here in question source. But if they leave school any are not likely to learn much from and go to work, they will learn more than they would if they stayed in some school. There are additional reasons , apart from the fact that , for supposing this to be so: people learn otherwise than from books one is that on a job a worker is usually rewarded at once if he gives that is ,learns something that improves his performance; the job,

incentives to present-oriented people, whereas the school gives them , not only to the future-oriented. Another is that in some jobs (but, alas even a fun

in all by any means) the thing to be learned is "

radically present-oriented person has an incentive to learn under these

172

173 "48)

SCHOOLING VERSUS EDUCATION

THE UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED

circumstances, As Howard S, Becker has written (in an essay titled the boredom which frequently accompanies high school education, The system should be changed to speed up the process of education, It School Is a Lousy Place to Learn Anything is evident from European practice , as wel1 as from that of the better On- the-job training is often effective because someone does have time to do schools in this country, that with proper curricula and teaching metha little teaching, because the enterprise allows enough leeway for the ods almost as much can be learned in a nine- year school as in the apprentice to make some mistakes without costing others too much present twelve- year one, Fritz Machlup, whose conclusion this is , has because the things that can interfere with his learning are fortuitous

occurrences rather than structural necessities,

remarked, " Most

people

can

learn what they ever learn in school in , or

eight years, and if they are kept there for ten, twelve, fourteen

"49

The third reason for getting non learners out of school is to improve sixteen years they will merely learn it more slowly, the situation of the learners, Although research studies have shown Dear Abby It is hard to say whether " Ashamed" (whose letter to " that in general high-achieving pupils are not adversely affected by the wel1 advised to go to a presence in the classroom of low-achieving ones , it seems obvious that is quoted at the head of this chapter) would be S a research group concluded ) school. In the 1960 a class composed largely or predominantly of bored and frustrated vocational (" trade

nonlearners will be far less stimulating for both teachers and pupils than one in which there are few or none such, The low achiever is, after al1 , frequently diligent and interested, By contrast, the nonlearner, as he has been cal1ed here , is one who has ceased to try, if indeed he ever did try, Because he is bored if for no other reason, he is likely to be a troublemaker. Even a few like him can distract and intimidate a whole class of serious students and wear almost any teacher down to the breaking point, In one slum school it was found

that even the best teachers had to devote half the school day to discipline and to organizational detail.It should be emphasized that lowering the school- leaving age to

fourteen need not mean giving less education to anyone, In the case of

the nonlearners it is only to acknowledge what already exists, The more able and willing students would in almost al1 cases go on to col1ege, Four years of high school is too much for those who will do manual work; it is not enough for those who will do work that requires education, These need at least fourteen years of schooling, and ending high school at the ninth grade would enable them to start col1ege

or

other advanced training that much sooner, An able pupil under the present system is usual1y ready for col1ege after the tenth or the eleventh grade, (In one experiment , such " dropouts " did as wel1 or better in col1ege than classmates who spent four years in high school; moreover, " their interest in their studies is often greater than that of their contemporaries who have been exposed to

that in most cases students having the capability and motivation to take a serious vocational course could do satisfactory work in an it.5O Recently the academic " one and would be better served by

Work in

HEW task force whose report was published under the title America

remarked that although vocational high school education is , few entry-

very expensive, costing 60 to 75 percent more than other

level jobs require the specific skills that it might provide; that more often than not vocational graduates take jobs for which they were not trained; and that vocational graduates are no less likely than other graduates to be unemployed or (except for a particular category) to , the US, earn more, 51 Presumably in recognition of these limitations Office of Education has since 197 I given priority in the awarding of traditional grants to school systems that agree to switch from the " a career education cal1ed " vocational training to something combination of technical training and academic study that begins in the early grades and offers a wide variety of courses of increasing

difficulty in order to prepare the student for a choice of occupations when he or she graduates, One stray fact suggests that just as it is about to be replaced by career education " the traditional form of vocational training may have' a clientele whose needs it can serve well, In Philadelphia, the absenteeism in the vocational schools had the highest rate of pupil 1940 S (when the city s middle class was much larger than it is now); since the middle 1960 , however , they have had the lowest.

, "

SCHOOLING VERSUS EDUCATION / 175 174 / THE UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED

income to the people in question themselves without thereby reducing their incentives to provide for served schedule (the usual practice is now to give them to all who have and thus in the long run making them worse off. their time , whether they have learned anything or not), the presence in The main reason for encouraging boys and girls who leave school a school of large numbers . of such children assures what Trow has to go to work, however, is not to increase their incomes but to hasten called " a second- class program for second- class students. " And, as he to bring them sooner into the adult world, where their growing up adds . . . they will know it , and that knowledge will feed their they will have the satisfactions of being taken seriously, of being on bitterness and resentment. "52 In other words Ashamed" is very; their own, of being responsible for themselves and indeed very soon adolescence is likely to end up being " Angry " or even " In Open Rebellion. for others as well. Stretching out childhood and If large numbers of boys and girls are to be let out of school after characteristic of the upper classes , and for them doing so makes good eight grades, which in most cases would be at the age of fourteen , the sense: the individual anticipates a long life and therefore an extended and a good question arises of how their time is to be occupied. One could argue period of preparation is both a luxury he can afford , better to that , even if they learn nothing in school , it is, on the whole 53 In the lower classes the individual's situation is investment as well. keep them there than to let them lie around in idleness or roam the very different: his earning power and his capacity to enjoy what and for streets. The young require a certain amount of looking after. Who is things of life are greatest in his twenties him are the good to look after them if not teachers? thirties and diminish rapidly thereafter. To force the lower classes to In principle , the answer to this question is easy. At whatever age is both adapt to the practice of the upper classes in these matters advantages they finish school , boys and girls should go to work. The discipline of loss the job will more than take the place of that of the school. Moreover pointless and harmful: it does not give their youth the that the upper class youth enjoy. Instead, it creates problems -boys one s job, and therefore one for the it is a better discipline. One chooses , loss of income of self-confidence , boredom, unrest boss and fellow workers , in that (at the very least) one can always quit and girls whose urge to grow up is frustrated and thus, of course and look for another; the boss knows this and therefore has some problems for the society as well. incentive to make the conditions of work pleasant or at least tolerable. As a matter of biology, youth is a time when one seeks a good deal But if the discipline of the job is in some ways less confining than that , preferably accompanied by excitement and ones that are on the whole beneficial to of hard physical exercise of the school , in other ways even danger. It is also a time when one wants and needs opportunities it is more confining. The employee must do or prothe individual and therefore to test one s qualito find out who and what one is, . perto keep his job. He is not against those of duce something of value if he is

Although without a doubt " Ashamed" received her diploma

mitteci, or at any rate not encouraged, to waste his time and that of

perable

in the way of

giving

ties - endurance , skill, courage ,

and the rest

adult models. These needs are especially strong in the lower classes others. Having to work is not really the disadvantage it is often made and they are more urgent among boys than among girls. (Youth out to be , for nothing is so demoralizing in the long run as to know. presentculture is in some ways similar to lower- class culture:,being and thrillsthat one s energies and abilities are of no use to anyone. excitement, danger oriented, it places high value on To a society as wealthy as this one , the loss of income from having and low value on providing for the being " where the action is nonlearners in school rather than at work is not of very great moment. future. would in most But neither is it trivial. Except in the elementary grades , the biggest! To be sure, the jobs that teen-agers might get items of cost are not buildings or teachers ' salaries but the earnings like pushing a broom around a factory. forgone by students. Tb.e importance of these forgone earnings is instances be far from exciting, , would be exciting as compared to sitting in Even a dull job, however greater than the dollar amounts might suggest because (as was exdiscussed are boring if not incoma classroom where the subjects perhaps insuobstacles Six) there are plained in Chapter

----:-

176 / THE UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED

SCHOOLING VERSUS EDUCATION / 177

~hensible, The factory, unlike the school , is the " real" world;/n line at all, would move to the head of the line. Ind ~ed, the real It IS a world ?f adults , usually male , and of lower- or working- (astianger may be not that the young woul~ be u ?able to find jobs but that opposed to n:lddl ~- or upper- ) class types, In such a world even dull~hey would find them too readily by dIsplacIng th ~ no- longer- young, work has satIsfactIons for a youth: one stands in line with men (notMiddle- and upper- class bias in favor of educatIon and prolonged kids ) to punch the time clock , one takes orders from a foreman whordolescence is one reason why the young are kept in school longer talks one s own language (instead of from a middle- class lady), andth~m necessary; another is that unskilled adult workers prefer not to ?e learns from the boss and from fellow workers that it makes a ompete with them for jobs, dIfference whether one does one s job or not. Not all jobs for the Even with no prejudice against the young and the unschooled, wIth young ~eed be as simple and unexciting as pushing a broom, however. the fullest of full employment , and with realistic prici ~g of lowperThere IS no reason why a healthy boy of fourteen or fifteen should not productivity labor , there would remain some boys and gIrls , j~b or do work at calls , for considerable strength , endurance , and bravery, haps a considerable number - who either , would not take a Indeed , It IS only In the upper classes of an affluent society that any :could not get one, These youths would reqUIre enough supervIsIOn to ?ubt ab ?ut this c eighteen to keep them " out of trouble " until they got a job or reached an age at .ouldage arise, as the military nIneteen IS the optImal forIf, a combat soldier , itasserts, is safe to say that : which they would be entitled to do exactly as they pleased so long as nothing, but prejudice prevents the employment of boys of that age as ' they broke no laws, Although publicly supported instit~tions would lumberjacks , long- distance truck drivers, longshoremen , construction have to meet this need, such institutions need not be In any sense workers , taxicab drivers , and the like , and of even younger ones as schools, The function of supervising the activities of nonlearners ~ion (namely, the helper ~ in thes ~ occupations, simply cannot be performed well by the same ins~itu It wIll be objec~ed that : whether because of prejudice or something school) that educates the learners. Th e combInatIOn means poor else , employers WIll not hIre boys and girls in their early teens; even at education for learners and anti educatIOn for nonlearners, If the the high wartime employment level of 1967 the unemployment rate schools were limited to their proper business , other institutions might among teen-agers was 13 percent, This figure need only be turned be developed to meet the needs of those boys and girls who are too old ~ro ~nd to answer the objection: if 13 percent of the teen-agers wantIng j?bs had not found them, then 87 percent had found them, The High school, it seems fair to conclude , cannot possIbly educate ~t IS that a great many boys and girls are employed: in New York those young people who are strongly disposed not to learn. In ~he CIty 106,494 aged fourteen to seventeen had jobs in 1970, 55 These case of lower- class youth, enforced attendance tends to und ~rmIne ~ng people , mor ~over , were able to get jobs despite many insti- what little self-respect the individual has and to aggravate h ~s feeltutlOnal obstacles In their way and in the way of potential em- ing, already strong, of being victimized by forces beyond hI ~ conployers state and federal child labor laws (the Fair Labor Stan- tro!. It must be acknowledged, however , that the alternatIve of dards Act prohibi ~s employment of anyone under sixteen for general allowing the lower- class youth to receive his diploma at the ag~ of

56

54

to learn but too young to work, "

work and under eIghteen for hazardous work; fourteen- and fifteen- fourteen and then expecting him to go to

year-olds may take nonhazardous , nonmanufacturing jobs

work presents seriOUS

after difficulties , too, The same class culture that stood in th ~ ~oy

s way in

He may nbt be wIlhn ~ to take a

school hours and for short periods), compulsory school attendance school will stand in his way elsewhere, laws , (t~e leaving ~g~ is sixteen in New York), licensing and union job even if good ones are available, Indeed, it is mo re than lIkely that restrictIOns , and mInImUm-wage rates that overprice low- productivity he will prefer the " action " of the street to any job that , he ,cou~d labor. If ~he ~e obstacleS"'were removed , many boys and girls who are possibly fill, If the choice is between idleness and demoralIzatIOn In now last III lIne for jobs , as well as many who are not permitted to get school and idleness and demoralization on the street , then doubtless

~~. SEVERAL KINDS OF CRIME / 181

180 / THE UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED

possibilities; he chooses from among them the one that he thinks will

to apply these theories have not led to the reduction of crime in the

city is painfully apparent, Indeed , it is possible that they may somehow have led to an increase in crime.

In this chapter it will be maintained that crime ,

like poverty, ~

depends primarily upon two sets of variables. One set relates mainly I

to class culture and personality (but also to sex and age) and determines an individual's

to crime. The other relates

propensity

tp

situational factors (such as the number of policemen on the scene and inducement, The probproneness to crime de- . potential for crime I and inducement. A city pends upon propensity average proneness of persons in various ~ may be thought of as the sex-age-culture- personality " groups times their number. This view does not deny all causal importance to alienation , poor housing, inferior schools , and the like, Such factors help to shape class culture and personality (and therefore propensity), and may also

the size of the payroll) and determines his his ability that he will commit crimes

influence the situation (and therefore incentive), However , the more subjective " factors (such as alienation) can seldom be defined and related to crime with much precision , while the connection between I

crime and more " objective " factors (such as housing) can almost l never be determined for the

reason that countless such factors \

influence culture and personality on the one hand and the situation on

yield him the most utility. He estimates the benefits and costs to

himself of acting on each alternative and chooses that which promises the largest net benefit, He counts as benefits whatever money or other material goods he expects to gain by the action, any satisfaction that

he expects to take in its performance (he may, for example

, enjoy

hurting someone), and any indirect returns that he expects to accrue from it (for example, a gain in reputation by virtue of having performed it), Similar considerations enter into his estimation of costs (for example , he may feel displeasure at having to hurt someone or may fear loss of reputation). He counts as a cost any work required in the performance of the action or in preparation for it (for example acquiring information about how to do it). above all It may seem far- fetched to describe human behavior in such rationalistic terms. In fact they cannot criminal behavior be applied either to the behavior of the insane (who commit only a negligible proportion of all crimes) or to that of narcotics addicts desperate need of a " fix " (addicts do not often

when they are in hus~ become desperate; usually they " feed their habits" by routine " 4 But except in these rather rare cases, there is an element tling in practically all indeed, a very considerable one calculation 5 To be sure , impulse characteristically enters into criminal behavior, element of others, but an some types of crimes more than into

As was remarked in earlier chapters , the policymaker usually must take certain cultural and psychological traits as given. If he is to change a city s potential for crime it must be by manipulating situational factors , which is to say inducements. It cannot be taken for

" are rarely rationality is hardly ever absent, (" Crimes of passion committed in the presence of policemen or against persons who are in a good position to defend themselves , and the juvenile who steals " punish his father " almost always steals something he wants and

granted that the measures commonly recommended for this purpose

almost always takes some account of his chances of being (:aught.

raising incomes , improving housing and schooling, and the like

will in fact tend to reduce crime. The reason why crime rates tend to be higher in large cities than in small ones

may

have something to

crimCriminologists generally agree that there is no such thing as a " inal type ; presumably, they mean that people decide whether or not to do illegal things in essentially the same way that they decide

do with the fact that in the larger city the individual has more

whether or not to do other things,

schooling, more income , and more opportunity.

The present scheme implies that when probable costs exceed prob, he will able benefits , an individual will not commit the crime. Indeed

Before entering into ..oil. discussion of substantive matters , it is necessary to give some further account of the analytical framework

not commit it even when probable benefits exceed probable costs if

just outlined.

It should not be supposed that everyone responds in the same way to the same inducements. Class-cultural and personality factors enter

The individual will be thought

of as perceiving various action

another (noncriminal) action promises to be

more

profitable.

182

THE UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED

into the individual's cost- benefit

calculus , making him more or less

ready to accept one or another type of criminal opportunity (or criminal opportunity in general), The influence of these factors may be such that situational ones will never induce him to commit a crime, Commonly, however , this is not the case; situational factors are often decisive even with persons who have little propensity toward crime. One who would " never think of stealing " steals when the temptation becomes great enough; that is , when the situation promises great enough benefits at small enough cost. Similarly, one who thinks nothing of murder may be checked by the presence of a policeman, The elements of propensity seem to be mainly these:

SEVERAL KINDS OF CRIME

Time Horizon,

This refers to the time perspective an individual

takes in estimating costs and benefits of alternative courses of action, The more present-oriented an individual , the less likely he is to take account of consequences that lie in the future. Since the benefits of crime tend to be immediate and its costs (such as imprisonment or loss of reputation) in the future , the present-oriented individual is ipso

facto more disposed toward crime than others, Taste for Risk,

Commission of most crimes involves a certain

amount of risk, An individual who places a very low (perhaps even a negative) value on the avoidance of risk is thereby biased in the direction of crime. Willingness to Inflict Injury.

Type of Morality, This refers to the way in which an individual conceptualizes right and wrong and , therefore , to the weight he gives to legal and moral rules in making choices, One whose morality is preconventional" understands a " right " action to be one that will serve his purpose and that can be gotten away with; a " wrong " action is one that will bring ill success or punishment. An individual whose

morality is preconventional cannot be influenced by authority (as opposed to power), One whose morality is conventional" defines right" action as doing one s " duty " or doing what those in authority require; for him , laws and moral rules have a constraining effect even postconventional" defines " right" action as that which is in accord with some universal (or very general) principle that he considers worthy of choice, Such an individual is constrained by law as such only if the principle that he has chosen requires him to be; if it requires him to obey the law only when he thinks that the law in

question is just, he is , of course , not under the constraint of law at all. Ego Strength,

This refers to the individual's

ability to control

himself especially to his ability to adhere to and act on his intentions (and therefore to manage his impulses) and to his ability to make efforts at self-reform, One who is radically deficient in ego strength cannot conceive or implement a plan of action; he has a

succession of fleeting resolves , the last of which eventuates in action under the pressure of circumstances.

Most crimes involve at least the

possibility of injury to others and therefore a certain willingness on the part of the actor to inflict injury, It may be useful to distinguish injury (" crimes any among (a) individuals with a distaste for inflicting , of course); (b) those " would still be open to them without victims might steal with a distaste for injuring specifiable individuals (they , but they would not cheat the corner grocer); from a large enterprise (c) those with a distaste for doing bodily (but not necessarily other) injury to people; and (d) those with no distaste for inflicting injuries, along with those who positively enjoy inflicting them, These several elements

in the absence of an enforcement apparatus, One whose morality is

183

combinations, In

of propensity tend to exist in

typical

morality is general , an individual whose

preconventional also has little ego strength, a short time horizon, a fondness for risk, and little distaste for doing bodily harm to specifiable individuals, The opposites of these traits also tend to be found together,

It also happens that individuals whose propensity toward crime is violent especially those with high propensity for relatively high tend to be those whose situation provides the. strongest crime incentive to crimes of the common sorts. The low- income individual to steal than does the high- income obviously has much more incentive

one, Similarly, a boy has much more incentive to " prove he is not chicken " than does a girl. In general , then, high propensity and high inducement go together.

SEVERAL KINDS OF CRIME / 185

184 / THE UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED

means that the individual' s actions are influenced not by conscience With respect to both propensity and inducement, there are very but only by a sense of what he can get away with,1o important differences between: (I) males and females, (2) persons of different class cultures, and (3) the young and the notThe general attitude toward stealing is one in which the individual feels Although their arrest rates for serious offenses have risen sharply some type of " right" to 00 so, It is not perceived strictly in terms of "ll in recent years (from 10 percent of all arrests in 1960 to 18 percent in stealing " but instead of " taking, 1972), females have much less propensity toward crime , especially Apparently everyone has this conception of stealing at a stage of violent crime, than males, (Among girls, running away from home is his childhood, Most persons grow out of it , pangs of conscience the most common offense , but females in general account for from 25 making it hard for them to steal; the lower-class person, however, to 30 percent of arrests for forgery, fraud, and embezzlement.) In continues to " take " things all his life. general , women seem to be more future-oriented than men, better able to control their impulses , more adverse to risk , and less disposed As the child grows older, there is a gradual change in the type of things stolen and their relative worth, There is a graduation from the candy bar to to inflict physical injuries, Be this as it may, in all class cultures their stealing from the rummage shop sale , to stealing from downtown departinducement to most kinds of crime is clearly less than that of men, Far ment stores, to stealing, signing and cashing welfare checks, from being under pressure to be " tough" and to prove that they have often inculcatedbeen around, " they are , even in the lower class, expected to be frail \ Infliction of bodily injury is also sanctioned and " domestic, " (It is safe to say that the women s liberation moveby lower-class culture, ment has had no influence upon the working and lower classes. ) In

young.

recent years large numbers of women have entered the labor force (however , relatively few in the lower-working and lower classes have

done so), but women are still much less likely than men to be in the role of provider - a role that increases both motive and opportunity for the most common crime , stealing, Moreover, their relative lack of physical strength disqualifies them from heavy criminal work as does from other heavy work, and no doubt it has much to do with their distaste for risk and for inflicting bodily injury, The difference in propensity and inducement is hardly less striking among classes than between sexes. For the lower- class individual high propensity coincides with high inducement. As a child he may have been punished physically rather than psychologically, and therefore it may seem natural to him that aggression take the form of a physical attack. 8 He has little ability to control impulses. His behavior is " decided upon " from moment to moment, Now without havin ' any intention of robbin ' this guy I was crossin ' the street. Actually I was crossin ' the street to rob him , but it actually wasn t on my mind, If someone had1rsked me why I had crossed the street I couldn t a told him, I just doin ' this unconscious,

The morality of lower- class

culture is preconventional , which

The lower classes not uncommonly teach their children and adolescents to strike out with fist or knife and to be certain to hit first. Both girls and boys at adolescence may curse their father to his face or even attack him with fists, sticks, or axes in free- for-all family encounters, Husbands and wives sometimes stage pitched battles in the home; wives have their husbands arrested; and husbands try to break in or burn down their own homes when locked out, Such fights with fists or weapons , and the whipping of wives, occur sooner or later in most lower- class families, They may not appear today, nor tomorrow , but they will appear if the observt:r remains long enough,13

The rapist , according to Amir, tends to be a member of a lowerclass subculture in which masculinity is expressed in general aggressiveness, including sexual exploits. Boys brought upin this subculture learn overt and direct aggressive attitudes and conduct from their "14 Exploitive behavior toward women families, as well as from peers, becomes part of their motivational systems: they do not conceive it as wrong or as a deviation from the normal." Because the lower-class style of life involves an unremitting search for sex and for relief from boredom, it tends to bring the individual , he has into situations in which he is likely to violate a law, Moreover no job, no money, no reputation little or nothing to lose

SEVERAL KINDS OF CRIME / 187

186 / THE UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED

being charged with a crime, In the lower-class world it is taken for granted that everyone " gets in trouble " and may go to jail now and then. Being known as vicious and violent may give one a certain prestige in the slum, as it does in a prison, Finally, since he is unwilling or unable to keep a job or to acquire a skill , the lower-class individual's opportunities for income are relatively poor, Even if the wage rate " for " hustling" were low (in fact it is often very high) that might be the best "job" open to an unskilled youth , especially one who prefers the " life of action " to regular work,15 in the upper-working Higher up on the class-cultural continuum the situation is very different as regards and lower-middle classes

individual has a strong sense of self, and he attaches great importance that to " developing his potentialities to the full, " Insofar as he thinks ), he tends has it made his future is sufficiently provided for (that he " to emphasize self- expression rather than self- improvement and, accordingly, present gratification rather than saving and investment; his style of life may then resemble that of the present-oriented to live in the chooses individual , except , of course, that whereas he to present , the lower-class one lives in it because he must, In order class develop or express his personality, the upper- or upper-middle" He " owes it to person seeks out new and " rewarding experiences, himself' to try dried grasshoppers with his

martinis and the

members of these classes have little taste for violence or for risk; they are also much more able to take the future into account and to control their behavior. But what most distinguishes them from those " above as well as from those " below " them on the class-cultural continuum is

equivalent with his sex , his politics, his child rearing, and all else, He feels obliged " as a responsible person " to decide for himself what is right and wrong; simply to accept the dictates of authority, including that of law , appears to him demeaning: one ought to assert oneself as an " individual" by deciding (on " rational" grounds, of course) what

their respect for authority, They tend

rules to follow, Having done so, one ought to have "

both propensity and inducement. As compared to the lower class

to accept unquestioningly

whatever the authority of law , custom , religious teaching, or even public opinion " declares, Of course , the individual sometimes does what h~ knows to be wrong, but when he does he feels guilty about it, The prickings of conscience weight his calculus heavily, if not always decisively, toward what he considers right and proper, In these classes, too, inducement tends to reinforce propensity, Once he has married and settled down, such an individual can usually earn more at honest work than he could get by crime, In addition , his

job , family, and circle of friends and neighbors insulate him from many temptations, He knows also that if he " got in trouble " he would lose his job and bring disgrace upon himself and his family, the It might be expected that those " highest" on the continuum would be least prone to crime, upper-middle and upper classes They have the greatest ability to take account of the future and to control themselves. They tend to be more apverse to risk , and, whereas the lower class has learned in childhood to be violent , they have learned to be nonviolent to hammer on the Playskool Cobbler Bench but not on their b.wthers and sisters, "16 There is , however , another tendency within the upper- and upper-middle-class culture that works in an opposite direction. The

the courage of

one s convictions,

ex-

Such an individual is apt to try illegal as well as other " periences, " He is especially apt to do so if he thinks that the law proscribing them is " stupid" or inappropriate to the circumstances of

his particular case, If he breaks the law, he is unlikely to feel guilty; on the contrary, he may take virtuous satisfaction in the thought that stupid" law he has performed a public service by helping to bring a " into disrepute. How upper- and upper-middle- class attitudes can lead by this from different route to behavior that is concretely indistinguishable

class may be seen in the matter of drug use, contrasting According to Dr, Norman E, Zinberg, there are two

that of the lower

motivations behind the use of drugs,

One group of users, drawn

like children " in mainly from the lower socioeconomic strata , are " that they " want nothing but the immediate satisfaction of pleasurable desires, " The other group, drawn mainly from the middle and upper Drugs give socioeconomic strata, consists of " experience seekers them a sense of liberation from convention, a feeling that a level of genuine experience which is closed to them by their culture is opened for them by the drug, "17

188 / THE UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED

SEVERAL KINDS OF CRIME / 189

As with drug use , so with many crimes: the " same " act has very different meaning for the experience-seeker and the pleasure-seeker,

If it is characteristic of the upper- and upper-middle-class individual to express his personality and to seek experience , it is also characteristic of him not to want to hurt others - indeed , to want to do them good if possible. This attitude also influences the kinds of crime that he may commit. For murder , assault , and rape violence in general- he has no stomach, He may commit an act of violence in order to further a political principle; this , after all , is what doing the right " thing or the "just" thing may require. Euthanasia and suicide are the only kinds of killing that are really compatible with his style however the latter because it injures no one but the doer and the former because it is a way of doing good, Whereas rates of aggressive (i. e., nonaccidental) homicide decrease the higher one goes on the class-cultural scale , those of suicide increase, The same principle applies to other kinds of crime. Vice , for example , may attract the upper- or upper-middle-class individual both because it is " experience " and because (in his view) no one is injured by it. Under some circumstances he may steal with a clear , or almost clear , conscience. If he is a, teen-ager he may " borrow " an automobile (much some think most auto theft is by middleclass youths), expecting that the owner will suffer nothing more than a certain amount of inconvenience on account of the theft. If he is a

grown-up, he may embezzle from an

organization (the larger the

better) knowing that no specifiable individual will be much injured by his action. If the organization is a very large one , he may steal in the knowledge that no one will be injured at all. Who suffers if he cheats a little on his income tax?

In every social class , children, adolescents , and youths , most of commit far more than their proportionate share of most crimes. In 1972 , 27 percent of all serious (" index ) crimes solved involved persons under eighteen years of age , although the age group ten to seventeen accounted for only about 16 percent of the nation them male ,

population.19 Of the arrests for violent crimes (murder , forcible rape aggravated assault , and robbery), 7 percent were of children under the age of fifteen, (These figures , it sHould be noted, include only arrests for serious offenses. In 1972 , 1 271 000 juveniles were " taken into

custody " by the police , nearly half being released without having been arrested, meaning for Change in the age composition of the population

all practical purposes , increase in the proportion of young menaccounts for 13 percent of the difference in the number of serious

crimes committed in 1970 as against 1960, an amount equal to that

caused by mere increase in the number ofthe popuiation, girls as well as By far the most common offense of the young " such as cigneed, is stealing. They steal things that they " boys arettes, candy, bicycles, and presents for girl and boy friends and mothers. 21 When they " need" something and do not have the money to pay for it , they " take " it. Stealing is also a way in which boys prove " themselves by displaying qualities that they believe (not altogether mistakenly) to be manly - boldness , stamina , willingness

in a word, " heart. " Unusual achievement along these lines earns a boy prestige among his fellows. " You stole eight cars!

to accept risk

Jeez!" The younger the individual , the greater (other things being equal) his propensity toward crime, Children , of course, have very little ability to control their impulses or to take account of the future, Even teen-agers are typically improvident in the extreme, Whatever money meant to them, the boys never kept it very long, When they had money, they stopped stealing and started spending, Very often

they bought things they did not need, and sometimes things they did not want. They would perhaps plan in rather meticulous detail how much money they would save for what , but the money seldom lasted long enough to be spent even the next day,

If ego strength and awareness of the future develop slowly, so does moral understanding. A boy has passed the stage of preconventional morality (if he is ever going to pass it) long before reaching his teens; the hold of conventional (or postconventional) morality on him is less than firm, however. Moreover , the disturbance , partly biological and partly sociopsychological , arising from the sudden eruption of sexual impulses and the compulsion to find an answer to the question: Who am I? frequently leads to confused and irrational behavior. In the case of boys , especially, one is struck by a resemblance

" "

" "

between the adolescent and the lower- class styles, Both emphasize the present , action , risk, defiance of authority, and the display of masculinity, " What sociologist David Matza says of the juvenilethat for him delinquency is (among other things) a way of " making things happen " and so of escaping a " mood of fatalism "23 probably true also of the lower- class

adult.

It is to be expected, then, that when male adolescence and lowerclass culture meet in the same person , they will interact , reinforce each other , and produce an extraordinarily high propensity toward

crime, At the other end of the class-cultural continuum , the situation is not altogether different: upper- and upper-middle- class people-

those of them who are oriented more toward self-expression than toward self- improvement encourage their children to " experiment" and " find themselves, " a process that is likely to reinforce the natural restlessness of the adolescent and to heighten his desire to " make things happen, " Describing the " cult of the present among middle- and upper-middle- class youths , psychologist Kenneth Keniston writes:

Indeed, among the defining characteristics of American youth culture the special world of American adolescents and young adults are a concentration on the present , a focus on immediate experience , an effort to achieve " genuineness directness sincerity, " in perception and human relations, We see this cult in both forms as a search for external stimulation and for internal transformation in many of the deviant behaviors of our society: in the search for adventure among delinquent gangs , in the use of drugs to break through the gates of perception , in the beat " quest for " kicks, " And in less extreme form , a similar emphasis on the present exists in the increasing American stress on consumption rather than saving, on the " rich , full life " in the present rather than the deferred goals and future satisfactions of an earlier society. Except as they may be lower- class participants in " the subculture of violence " (which a

191

SEVERAL KINDS OF CRIME

190 / THE UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED

high proportion of chronic and serious

offenders are), young delinquents do not enjoy hurting people, When they employ violence , it is as a means rather than as an end in itself. Youth gang members , :recording to Walter B. Miller , see it as a means of winning " honor and glory, Gang members fight to secure and defend their honor as males; to secure and defend the reputation of their local area and the honor of their women;

to show that an affront to their pride and dignity demands retaliation, Combat between males is a major means for attaining these ends, fighting gang" of the 1950 S suc-

sometimes supposed the " end of cumbed to drug addiction in the 1960 S and then, toward the times, rethat decade , having been politicized by the spirit of the It is

established and (for reasons never explained) took to intergang violence with unprecedented ferocity, This, according to Miller (upon 26 whose The forthcoming work this paragraph is wholly based), is myth,

is itself a product

fighting gang misperceptions,

All

street gangs

of

police and journalistic

engage in criminal activities-

and although never as more than a small part of their total activity , including the average gang

s repertoire of illegalities is both large

various forms of assault , theft, property destruction, drug abuse, and

drinking, and also highly susceptible to changes of fashion and to

variations by place: thus the " rumble " was " " in some cities (but not others) in the 1950 S and it is again " " in some (but not others) in the 1970

S, No gang has been politicized and, plausible as it is to

expect it , interracial hostility is not a frequent basis of intergang conflict, In Philadelphia , for example , most clashes are between black

gangs, It is the recurrent changes in style that attract the attention of the media, but from a sociological standpoint the nature of the underlying reality is remarkable for its stability, Although they used many Yiddish phrases, the Jewish gangs of the 19 10

S did not differ

basically from the black and other gangs of today, More than anything else , it is the size of a city s lower class that determines the number and size of its gangs, In the large majority of cases, delinquent boys and girls cease their delinquencies when (typically in the late teens for the girls and middle down to jobs and to twenties for the boys) they marry and settle fun" all of a sudden looking after children, Then things ihat were " become " kid stuff, " The few whose delinquency continues in adult life

probably come disporportionately from the lower

class, In these

cases, class culture , rather than the confusions that attend rapid

physical and psychological development

, may have been the real

cause of trouble all along, class- ification which has One would expect the process of middle-

been going on for at least a century to have brought about a gradual decrease in the rate of violent crime (but not of victimless crimes,

SEVERAL KINDS OF CRIME

193

192 / THE UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED

including the violent one of suicide). As the population moves upward on the class-cultural scale , the proportion of people able to control especially impulses which if acted upon would protheir impulses

increases as does the proportion duce a flow of blood and gore whose families and friends would be horror-struck by such crimes. Although long time-series of crime rates exist for . only two cities Boston and Buffalo , these tend to support the impression that , taking urbanized areas as wholes and allowing for changes in the age composition of their populations, the rate of violent crime in the cities has declined by something like one- third in the last century.27 Although the rate of crimes of violence reported to the police has increased dramatically since the early 1960 , it is not certain that this represents a departure , or even a significant deviation , from the long- term trend. Fuller reporting of crimes accounts for some part of the increase. But the changed age , class-cultural , and racial composition of the large cities accounts for most of it. (In 1972 , nearly half of all reported crimes of violence were in the twenty-seven cities of 500, 000 or more population and two- thirds of all reported robberies were in cities of 250 000 or more. ) For reasons discussed in previous chapters , the class-cultural composition of the large cities came to be , in the 1960 S, not very different from what it had been half a century or more ago. Two other changes interacted with this

one: the rapidly increasing proportion of blacks in the large cities (as was pointed out in Chapter Four , judging from arrest rates Negroes, even when income , schooling, and other such factors are controlled for, commit far more than their proportionate share of violent crimes) and the even more rapidly increasing proportion of the cities ' population that is in the crime- prone years of adolescence and youth (because the black population was a relatively young one , the proportionate increase of black youths in the 1960 S was about twice that of whites).

One who knew in advance that these demographic changes would most of the " breakdown , made some S. Other factors, however " in the 1960 of law and order Imprcwements in health services, Roger Starr has contribution to it. , may have lowered the death-rate (which must have been suggested extraordinarily high a century ago) among the most violence- prone

occur in the large cities could have predicted

people. 28 The sudden spread of drug addiction doubtless increased the

amount of violence somewhat, although probably not as much as is widely supposed. (Except in Harlem, there was little belief, addiction before addiction about 1965; moreover , contrary to the widespread crimedoes not " drive " many people to crime, least of all violent commit crimes are in most cases persons who do those addicts who 29) would commit crimes anyway. class subCrime rates have risen in small cities, including middle-

urbs, as well as in the large cities. To some extent this reflects the greater ability of lower- and lower-working class people to find housing and jobs in the fringe areas; to some extent also it is a result of the expressway days motorists development of urban expressways. In prelights, and police officers had good

had to stop frequently

for

opportunities to look them over and to spot those who appeared suspicious. Now motorists drive back and forth between the central city and the suburbs without stopping and at such speeds that no one can tell whether they are suspicious- looking or not. class persons in the The greater proportion of youths and lowercity s population probably does not entirely explain the increase in the rate of common crime of the last few years, however. It seems any of likely these (the data do not allow of very confident statements on

class persons are conmatters) that upper-working- and lower- middleago. siderably more crime- prone than they were a generation or morewage

If this is really the case, the reason probably is not that the " of crime has increased relative to other (honest) work. A more plausible explanation is that these classes have come to have less respect for authority, including the authority of the law. It may be that their conventional morality has been weakened and partially destroyed by the example of the upper classes and by the efforts of these classes to " One wonders what liberate " them by the process of " education. may be the effect on boys and girls brought up to respect authority of to " hold Seventeen) the advice (given by an ex-nun in the magazine , of always the openness of questioning the president of the college questioning the dean of students, of questioning the policy of the United States in Vietnam, of questioning fair housing, laws Newdivorce York Times and birth control"30 or of the view (attributed by the

to a nun photographed " holding a semiofficial late evening session at

,"

194

SEVERAL KINDS OF CRIME

THE UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED

Clancy s Bar on Third Avenue ) that the Pope and Bishops " ought to be charismatic types who see their job as turning us on and supporting us in doing our things, "31 Conceivably, the effect of such words on working- and lower-middle- class persons may be to

195

white racism" by the Kerner Commission) encouraged many blacks to blame the social system for all their problems and to feel that racial denial of injustice, past as well as present, somehow justified not only " condemnation of the condemnresponsibility " on their part but also "

33 In other words, the atmosphere of the

. ers" in acts of aggression, intend) to renew and strengthen them, The alternative to respect for, 1960 S may have spread the impression, especially among the young,

undermine their moral foundations

rather than (as the speakers

external authority is not necessarily respect for internal authority: it t that, as victims of oppression, Negroes had, if not a license to break the law, at least reduced responsibility for breaking it. Although the other

may be no respect at all, easier for Other changes in public opinion have also made it

working- and lower-working-class people to commit crimes, Perhaps the most important of these changes is the wide acceptance during the 1960 S of the view that individuals belonging to groups that have

suffered injustice or are severely

disadvantaged (for example

Negroes and the poor) have a kind of quasi right to have their offenses, against the law extenuated or even to have them regarded as political

acts reflecting a morality " higher " than obedience to law, Even crimes

that were formerly regarded as wholly unpolitical and immoralrape, for example

were in the 1960

S invested with political and

moral meaning, and hence with some justification , when committed

by one who (whether this meaning was in his mind or not when he committed the crime) belonged to a group that possessed this special license to have its violations of law extenuated or even approved, Soul on lee Eldridge Cleaver, for example , in his autobiographical explains the apparently numerous rapes that he committed, some of them against black women, on the grounds that racial injustice had 32 It is created in him a powerful attraction-repulsion to white women,

plausible to suppose that many of his hundreds of thousands of

readers accept the view that a rape that can be interpreted as a gesture of social protest is not wholly without justification and may even be in some way admirable, In the 1960 S the Negro crime rate appears to have increased far more than can be accounted for by changes in the age distribution of the population, Robbery arrests, for example , more than doubled and Negroes account for nearly four- fifths of the difference between the number of arrests at the beginning and at the end of the decade, It is plausible to suggest that the rhetoric of the civil-rights movement and of the Great Society (including the much- publicized emphasis given to

overwhelming majority of

their victims continued to be

Negroes, there seems to have been a decided increase in the proporenforcement officers tion of attacks on whites, The number of law killed by Negroes has increased in recent years,identified, (In 1963- I38967 there percent were 298 such killings; of the 398 offenders were Negro, In 1968- 1972

there were 488 killings; of the 686

offenders identified , 55 percent were Negro,

) Impressionistic and

fragmentary evidence suggests that explicitly racial elements may in the last few years have become more important in the motivation of as, for example, in the case of two youths some Negro offenders who, when they held up a Philadelphia trolley in the34Spring 1973, " I amof increaswhite passengers, only announced they would rob Wolfgang, the criminologist that ingly convinced, " writes Marvin among many black teen- agel's and young adults there is a systematic ideology that ripping off whites as a kind Soul on Ice diffusion of the , tolerated and even encourof compensatory behavior is acceptable aged, Raping white women, stealing from white commercial establishments, mugging whites in the street and burglarizing white residential espe-

"35

quarters are all increasingly viewed by many black juveniles

cially as behavior that is Robin Hood in style and another mark of victory for the black community, Although, as this suggests, policymakers have probably increased , of course the propensity of certain groups to crime (without

intending to do so or even being aware of having done so), it does not follow that by pursuing a more enlightened policy they could significantly reduce it. Certainly in the short run, and probably in the long run as well, the main factors influencing both the propensity of in short, the various groups to crime and the size of these groups must be taken as given, As a later chapter city s potential for crime

SEVERAL KINDS OF CRIME

197

196 / THE UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED

number of will contend, it is very doubtful whether in a free country, or indeed in f quency is not as destructive as is generally supposed, The delinquency is any

country, either the size or the culture of the lower class can be

changed according to plan, With respect to the other factors that are the constraints are at sex and age most significant for crime least as great. The policymaker must take both the number of boys in the city and the fact that " boys will be boys " as given, Conceivably, he might in effect reduce their numbers by shortening the period of their sociological and psychological (as opposed to biological) adolescence for example , by reducing the school- leaving age and by and youth but even this would not improving their opportunities to work change the situation fundamentally, can do (in principle , at least) is reduce What the policymaker , it inducements to crime, These will be recalled, are the benefits and costs entering into the individual' s calculus in consequence of the situation in which he is placed. Even though his propensity toward crime is great , he will not commit a crime if situational factors make

boys and girls killed or seriously injured in acts ofseriously injured probably small compared to the number killed or in football and skiing accidents and it is certainly trivial compared own or someone else to the number who lose life or limb :J7 their the stealing that the young

seeking thrills on the highway; do is not of enormous economic importance either (about 90 offenses percent of all stolen cars are recovered), Moreover, there are some boy for which no socially acceptable substitutes can be found, If a

must defy authority, he obviously

must do so in a way that

the

authorities do not approve, Another way of raising the benefits of noncrime is by increasing the relative rate of return from it, In the view of some economists lack of middle and latter job opportunities caused the rise in crime in the 1960 S; therefore " a successful attack on rising crime rates "38must This

some noncriminal action appear more profitable, Similarly, even if his

consider the employment problems facing young people, availability of easy argument, however, can be turned around: the

he will commit a crime if the situational benefits of doing so are sufficiently great. The implication is , of course , that efforts to deter crime should concentrate on increasing the inducements to noncriminal behavior especially those offered to persons who are near the margin between that is, who do not need to be moved very far crime and noncrime one way or the other. In principle, this may be done either by raising the costs of crime or by raising the benefits of noncrime, One way of raising the benefits of noncrime is by lowering its relative cost. Thus, for example , it has been suggested that if some public or quasi- public organization were to make usable , second- hand

This view receives some support from Stanley Friedlander, who, after studying unemployment and crime rates in 30 cities in 1960 and , the more property 1966, concludes that " contrary to the literature nonwhites in crimes in a city, the lower the unemployment rate for both time periods, " People engaged in crime or supported by it, he not writes, " had means of support that allowed them not to work and less dramatic result is force, The labor to be counted in the unemployment (among nonwhites) in cities with high property crime

propensity is very small ,

cars available on a loan basis , or at very low cost, to poor youths,

perhaps also helping them to learn to drive and to get drivers ' licenses fewer cars would be stolen, 36 Another way would be to introduce the individual to new and preferred action possibilities, Parachute jumping, skiing on fast slopes, and " golden gloves " boxing, for example may offer slum boys better opportunities to display " heart" than does stealing cars. The practical difficulty is, however , that some . these alternatives may be more costly in life and limb or in money

than the actions for which substitutes are needed, Juvenile del in-

money in the " hustles " (or, as some economists are now calling it, the irregular economy ) may have caused withdrawals from the labor force which have been wrongly perceived ' as lack of job opportunities,

rates. "39

Impressionistic evidence from the social anthropologist Elliot

suggests that some workers move regular " econofreely back and forth between the " irregular " and " mies depending upon the opportunities of the day, In a recent year,

Liebow in his book

Tally

s Corner

the crime rate in Washington for the month of August jumped

percent over the preceding month, A veteran police officer explained

the increase to David L. Bazelon, Chief Judge , U, for the District of Columbia,

S, Court of Appeals

SEVERAL KINDS OF CRIME 198

THE UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED

It's quite simple. . . . You see, August was a very wet month. . . . These people wait on the street corner each morning around 6:00 or 6:30 for a truck to pick them up and take them to a construction site. I f it's raining, that truck doesn t come, and the men are going to be idle that day. If the bad weather keeps up for three days. . , we know we are going to have trouble on our hands - and sure enough, there invariably follows a rash of purse-snatchings, house- breakings and the like. . . . These people have to

199

poof the calculating individual , the greater probability of a this cost, the liceman s appearing represents a cost; the higher

less likely (other things being equal) the individual is to commit a crime, " Operation 25, " an experiment tried all too briefly by the New

York Police Department

in

1954, gave indications that rather

dramatic results can be obtained by " saturating" an area with patrolmen. 41 For a four-month period the force in a high-crime district of eat like the rest of us, you know. Manhattan was doubled, Muggings fell from 69 to 7, auto thefts from , increased now, For' 78 to 24, and assaults from 185 to 132, Murders, however Most stealing is done by persons who want small amounts , murder is not from 6 to 8, (Since it generally takes place in private only at the them a job that must be worked at regularly and that pays is not a real alternative to stealing, Even if the wage likely to be deterred by the presence on the street of any number of end of the week ) To what extent the drop in crime reflected not deterrence rate is high, such a job is of no interest to one who wants only a few policemen, in t/wt altogether but rather deterrence from crime from crime dollars - enough , say, to buy a couple of six- packs of beer and a (that is, its displacement to a less heavily patrolled this very day, perhaps particular precinct but wants them now carton of cigarettes , no way of knowing, one) there is, of course this very hour. What is needed to reduce stealing, then, is not so much penalty to an offense sometimes, but by Attaching a stiffer high employment and rising incomes as it is greater opportunity for the first In means always, raises the cost of the action significantly, people who live in the present to get small sums when they want themo r class Paying unskilled workers by the day instead of the week would help place , the penalties most likely to deter a middle- or workingthe disgrace that his arrest and conviction will bring upon matters some, So would paying them for days that they are prevented person are not penalties at all his family and the prospect of losing his job from working by weather, the illness of a family member , or some

other good reason, So far as employment levels are concerned , the to those whose families would not feel disgraced (and to whom it whose chances of getting ajob in the need is not so much for more " good" jobs as it is for more casual would not matter if they did) and not be affected by any number of . secondary labor market would jobs that , although not high paying, are readily available to ones most of the common crimes are persons who want to " make a few bucks " when, and only when, the arrests, So far as those who commit fines and penalties legal only is normally concerned, it spirit moves them, Boys, especially, need such job opportunities; that enter into the calculus at all, These sometimes imprisonment perhaps there is no more economical way of reducing juvenile make a difference: when the penalty for prostitution was drastically , than by repealing the minidelinquency, and thus crime in general

number of prostitutes in the city mum wage and relaxing the child- labor and school-attendance laws, reduced in New York City, the The main effect of these laws, it is probably safe to say, is to make . increased very quickly, some coming from cities hundreds Of miles stealing the boy s easiest , if not his only, way of getting the money and " away in order to take advantage of the lower costs of doing business other things he thinks he needs.

If making it easier to earn money is one way of influencing the outcome of the individual's calculus of profit and loss when he contemplates crime , increasing the probability both of his being caught and of his being sever~y punished is another. Obviously, one way of

doing the former with respect to the kinds of crimes that occur in public places is to put more policemen on patrol. From the standpoint

there.

The opportunities to deter crime by threatening penaltiespenal-

severe crime . by threatening part, this is because the probability of In are sharply limited, ties 43 (Of the crimes serious being caught is negligible for minor offenses. ) But it is committed in 1972, only one- fifth were solved by arrests. also, as James Q. Wilson has pointed out , because severity of punespecially to deter

serious

SEVERAL KINDS OF CRIME 200

THE UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED

difference between a one- and a five- year sentence appearing large and that between a twenty- and a twenty-five year one small) and because the more severe the penalty the less likely it is to be imposed, " To insure . conviction , to avoid an expensive trial , to reduce the chances of reversal on appeal , and to give expression to their own views of benevolence , prosecutors and judges will try to get a guilty plea, and,

ishment is subject

Burglary

Robbery

Larceny

$7, 050

$5, 900

$8, 400

$3, 175

$3, 450

$ 675

to rapidly diminishing returns (the

Final cost per crime deterred by increasing probability Final cost per crime deterred by increasing sentence

201

being convicted smaller, and that of being severely punished smaller report of the all they can offer in return is a lesser sentence, The more severe the accompanying diagram, from the 1969 still. If the "1'+ , there is no doubt that sentence , the greater the bargaining power of the accused, , , , Violence Commission, were brought up to date Several recent studies have found that increasing the probability of the small circles would shrink considerably, It is indicative of this that punishment generally has more deterrent effect than increasing the

despite the rapidly rising crime rates, the number of persons in prison severity of it, 45 Antunes and Hunt , taking as their measure of" has declined steadily and in 1970 (the latest year for which figures are probability the number of persons sent to prison each year in each available) was 23, 720 (10 percent) less than in 1961. state for a given crime divided by the number of those crimes reported The threat of even very stiff future penalties would not have a was , showed that where a crime in those states in the previous year deterrent effect upon radically present-oriented individuals. It is

most likely to lead to imprisonment it was least likely to be commitlikely that even to a normal person a punishment appears smaller the ted, There was no such association between severity of punishment , as f: farther off in the future it lies, With the radically present-oriented, measured by the median length of prison sentence , except in the case this distortion of perspective is much greater: a punishment that is far of murder, (Capital punishment was left out of account, 4(j) In an enough off to appear small to a normal person appears tiny, or is quite earlier study, Tittle found that for all offenses except murder the rate invisible, to a present-oriented one, His calculus of benefits and costs of crime decreased as the probability of punishment increased no is defective , since benefits are in the present where he can see them matter what the level of severity, Curiously, the association was while costs are in the future where he cannot. Accordingly, even if he weakest in more highly urbanized areas. 47 In still another study, knows that the probability of his being caught is high and that the Ehrlich found that much depends upon the offender s attitude toward penalty for the crime is severe , he may commit it anyway; no matter risk: one who is averse to risk is deterred more by an increase in the how severe , a penalty that lies weeks or months away is not a part severity of punishment than by an equal increase in the probabil- ~ of reality for him, class ity of it whereas with one who prefers risk the opposite is the case, The implication is that in order to deter juveniles and lower, as The policy significance of these findings may change , however persons (the present-oriented classes of offenders), penalties must costs of the Reynolds has pointed out , if one takes into account the follow very closely upon the commission of crimes, Speeding up court 49 Increasing the severity of punishment is very much two methods, processes so that fines will be imposed or jail sentences begin hours or less costly than increasing the probability of it , and the difference in days, rather than weeks or months, after arrest would probably reduce is so great as to make the latter for some crimes at least cost somewhat the rate of common crimes even if the probability of arrest greater method appear nothing short of extravagant despite its and conviction remained as low as it now is, effectiveness. He has worked out the following table which compares As a practical matter , it is probably impossible to arrange a court the cost of deterring a marginal property crime by each method, procedure that would bring punishment within the time horizon of the these, the judge and jury As a practical matter , even for serious crimes (murder being a r most present-oriented, In order to deter partial exception) the probability of being caught is small , that of

THE UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED

204

SEVERAL KINDS OF CRIME

make it difficult or impossible for him to commit the crime, FoJ

205

to deterrents, why does If the potential criminal responds rationally~ing them? The answer is

the potenti ~l vi ~ti ~ act rationally by offe subdivision ~ontaining act ratIOnally, but the structure does resIdences near WashIngton, D, c., IS surrounded by two fences wim that the potential victIm usually is such that he seldom has much guardhouses at two entry points, The fencing is watched by closed) of the situation in which he is placed ~ in ~e me ~sures ,eve~ when t~ey are ~impl ~nti sensors, Resident~ incentive to take prev ~pplemented ~y hidden , s circuit television and IS a one s car carry ID cards , and VIsItors are permitted beyond the guardhouse& their nature and effective m their apphcatlOn, Lockmg anyone occasion is only after a resident has telephoned approval. This, of course , is the! nuisance, and the probability of its being stolen on ~mple ,

a 167-acre ,

sixty-seven high-COS1 not

extreme,

small, If the motorist counts the nuisance of having to lock the car at

stairways built on the exterior of a build- no more than a fraction of a cent, it may very well be cheaper for him Architectural features ing and enclosed with glass, proper placing and trimming of trees and to run the risk of his car s being stolen than to take the trouble to lock shrubbery, elimination of potential hiding places, windowless walls it. measures In the case of shoplifting, the appropriate deterrent on ground floors - may make criminal action more troublesome selfdisplaying goods differently and making less use of inconvenient, or risky enough (in some sense more costly) to deter

although simple and effective may be costly in terms of , measures to deter theft are likely radios , and new profit, From a business standpoint

it.51 Even such simple devices as well-made locks ,

powerful streetlights ,

clocks to turn on lights and

burglar alarms, service

kinds of glass that take ten or fifteen minutes to break may raise costs to be inefficient. enough to make a crimina~ undertaking a~pear unprofita?l~, As was One large chain of bookdealers reported less than , 5 percent loss, Instead of remarked above , most cnmes are committed opportumstlcally by regarding this minuscule loss as a cause for rejoicing, it was regarded as the much personal youths who want small amounts of money right away and will not result of " old fashioned" merchandising methods including Certainly, " said the security reprego to much trouble , or take much risk to get it, A target need be service by a large staff of sales clerks, " sentative, " we have a small inventory shortage, but our payroll for sales be ahead by a~ce ~talmost nothing, ~e could Obviously " hardening the target " is not a task for law enforcement personnel cuts our profit to ~lifting, , aU the losse ~ It "':111 Self-servIce, pl inevitability of sho

hardened very little to protect it from them,

~ the ,

With agencies, The ordinary citizen , by installing a good lock on his door in brIng wIll net us more profit 10 the long run than mdIvlduahzed serVIce and taking the trouble to use it can do more to deter bur lar tha almost no oss at aU, "52

could any number of policemen, Similarly, by displaying his goods in

view of some

one way rather than another , the merchant can do more than the Petty pilfering by white-collar employees, in the police to reduce shoplifting, Institutions acting in behalf of individu- employers, improves their morale and is an alternative to higher wage architects and builders, city planners, and lawmak- rates, als or public ers

can take the initiative in some matters (and may on occasion go Another reason why a potential victim does not go to more trouble

if the worst further than their clients, customers, or constituents would wish), and expense to deter crime is that he often knows that perhaps most happens and he becomes a victim, he can shift Thus , for example , Congress , by requiring automobile manufacturers to install antitheft devices on the steering columns or transmissions of all- of his loss to an insurance company or to some other institution, or helped to cause - a If the motorist were not insured against theft, he would be more likely cars built after January I , 1970, caused decline of about 4 percent in the number of cars stolen in 1972 , the to lock his car, And if in addition the police charged a proper fee for it, first decline in history, Thus, also, city agencies may plan the use of recovering stolen cars, he would be still more likely to lock because the some crimes are not deterred will be seen that minIt space , distribute facilities ~street lighting, for example), and set " imum security " standards for buildings so as to further the creation of potential victims lack a sufficient incentive to do so or may even have to, This may occur even in those instances where the not an incentive what is being called the " defensive city,

206

207

SEVERAL KINDS OF CRIME

THE UNHEA VENL Y CITY REVISITED

people and are collective benefits from deterrence would far exceed the collective i weighed against the gains to be had from it. Millions ofcashed, convenienced by the ease with which checks can be ' stores and costs , for the profitability of anyone s incurring costs for deterrence ~ millions are served by having the goods in department may depend upon everyone s (or almost everyone s) incurring them. I

One way of getting around this is to organize entities so large that it supermarkets displayed so that close inspection of them is possible. will pay them to invest in preventive measures whether others do or These benefits to the consumer are worth something; possibly they are so large, that is, that the gain to them from the preventive ~ worth all the billions that they cost in the higher prices that must be not charged to cover losses by theft, in the taxes that are payments required totosupmeasures, even though not the whole gain (that is, even though others the

, jails, and in the welfare in jail. profitable. This is what economists call " internalizing the externali- L dependents of persons who areaccount that the costs of collectively One must also take into ties, obvious, for required deterrents may exceed their benefits, It is not It is of course a function of government to act where a collective s money by requirexample, that Congress got much for the consumer that advantage can be secured only by the exercise of an authority ing him to purchase antitheft devices with his new car. (Car thefts able to compel people to pay for a good or of the tax collector from 197 I to 1972, about 61 000 cars decreased by 6 percent service (reduction of crime) whether they want it or not. This is the If we assume that the devices were solely responsible for the decrease theory that justifies public support of law enforcement agencies and 000 for the I I million and that they cost $30 per car, or $330, 000, ) Nor is it presumably it is the one that justified Congress in requiring manufaccars produced, the per theft cost of prevention was $5,410, turers of automobiles to equip all new cars with antitheft devices and ride free ) is nevertheless large

enough to make the investment

certain cities in requiring builders to install locks of a kind specified in a "

minimum security code,

t

port police forces, courts

obvious that cities which require home builders to install locks that cost an extra $50 to $ 100 per dwelling thereby secure public benefits

chant in whose store they were caught. The bad-check collecting

large enough to justify the added burden on the home buyer. It is arguable that intangible benefits to the public from the reduction of crime will outweigh almost any dollar-and-cents cost to consumers or taxpayers. Neither convenience nor money, some will say, ought to count for much , or perhaps for anything at all, against the value of lawabidingness, , and Even if legal penalties were brought much closer to the present even if potential victims took all reasonable precautions, it is safe to would

services that the police perform could be charged to the storekeepers who accept bad checks. A strong argument for doing these things is that the cost to the individual of deterring crime is trifling as com-

continue to commit a great many serious crimes, There are individuals whose propensity to crime is so high that no set of incentives that it whole population would influence their

There is much to be said for governmental measures to reduce or remove the disincentives that tend to prevent people from taking

simple measures to deter crime, Insurance companies could be forbidloss of cars that were left unlocked , according to one report), Shoplifters (two-fifths of all those stolen

den to reimburse owners for

could be arrested by the police , rather than by store detectives, and

the cost of their arrest, detention , and trial charged against the mer-

pared to the cost to the public of dealing with it after it has been committed. A California study showed that the average " career cost" of a forgery and check offender is $ 16 900 , as compared to $5, 800 for an adult homicide offender.

54 ("

Career cost" is what the authorities

spend on an average offende~pver his entire lifetime, One must take into account , however, that certain benefits are more or less incompatible with deterrence , and the loss of these must be

say that some people

mostly young, lower-class

males

is feasible to offer to the

behavior, They may be compelled, but they cannot be deterred, The someone not to commit compelling only entirely effective way of

crimes is to lock him up

in the most extreme case , in solitary

confinement. Society does this even if the individual has not commit-

ted a crime when it is considered almost certain that he cannot be prevented in any other way from committing very serious crimes. No

SEVERAL KINDS OF CRIME /

208 / THE UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED

209

and

peace " bond; he might not possess firearms or ride in private automobiles, and he would be liable to search at any time,

this even if he had not as yet seriously injured anyone, The case is

2, In addition to the above , he would be sequestered in a

one would doubt the wisdom or justice of confining indefinitely a madman who , if released, would rush to attack anyone he saw

very different , however , if as may be with most of those who might l be found undeterrable (say, those who are very present-oriented and have little ego strength and a preconventional conception of morality) the probability of their committing serious crimes is , although high , by no means a certainty, Even if one could be sure - which , of , course , one cannot that a particular boy now aged sixteen 'has a .

small town. 3, He would be

confined to a penal village or work camp

where he might receive visitors and support a family but which he might not leave,

An arrangement of this sort might be justified both on grounds that it is more humane than imprisonment (a consideration that ought to one would not lock him up for that period as a preventive measure, have special weight in dealing with people who are not able to control themselves to the normal extent and whose moral responsibility is If there is any acceptable way of dealing with this problem there may not be it would appear to be by abridging the individu- i accordingly less) and on grounds that, being more humane and also aI's freedom in a degree that corresponds to the expected costs In I fairer , judges would be more willing to make use of it and it would probability of committing several robberies over the next ten years,

and

crime to society of his being free (that is, to the probability of his:

therefore be more effective in reducing crime,

56 As a practical matter

committing crimes times a measure of their seriousness), Thus, for ! however , it might prove unworkable, If, as seems likely, the undeexample , the boy with a , 5 probability of committing several robber- I terrables could not be deterred from breaking the rules of such a ies might be kept under the surveillance of a parole officer , whereas I system , the authorities would be forced to abridge their freedom in order to abridge it at all, If this wholly - by imprisoning them one with a , 9 probability of committing murder might be confined, The principle implies , of course , that the law provide a gradation of effect were general , the scheme would not work: it would lead to the abridgments of freedom , more or less onerous ones to be imposed imprisonment of all the undeterrables, including, of course , those who would never have been imprisoned but for the scheme iteslf, It may be his committing serious crimes, 55 The knowledge that his freedom doubted, too , whether the least onerous abridgments (Level I) would would be further abridged if he misbehaved would doubtless have be very effective in preventing crime, Conceivably, their chief effect some deterrent effect in many cases , but it must not be forgotten that would be to sort out rather quickly those who required more stringent the reason for the abridgments of freedom is not deterrence (it being abridgments, any undeterrables who are here under discussion) but the reduction of the The scheme is, of course , open to objection on the ground that

upon the individual as his behavior raises or lowers the probability of

individual' s

opportunities to commit crimes, In other words, he is not

abridgment of an individual's freedom on the ground that he

may

threatened with some partial loss of freedom in order to make the commit a crime is incompatible with the essential principles of a free criminal action relatively unattractive; rather , he is deprived of some society. 57 But , of course , unless it is for retribution, the imprisonment freedom in order to prevent him from taking the criminal action that of persons who have been convicted of crimes is on the assumption may commit more; the grounds of this probability judgment, that they Such a scheme might employ successive levels of abridgment although different , are not necessarily any better and under certain conditions may even be worse than those of judgments regarding any crimes, In any persons who so far as is known have not committed event , if abridging the freedom of persons who have not committed I, The individual would be required to keep in touch weekly with a probation officer, to observe a 10 P. M, curfew , to post a crimes is incompatible with the principles of free society, so, also , is

he prefers., as

follows:

213 RIOTING MAINLY FOR FUN AND PROFIT

212 / THE UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED

toughs are Negro, but they could as well be white, The third event is This is not the view that will be taken here, The assumption that if! an outburst of righteous indignation on the part of people who have they are Negroes is naive, So is the! because Negroes riot it must be witnessed what they think is an act of gross injustice, The young man people who are poor, or who have long been! who was killed was black and the policeman who killed him was assumption that if they are poor or have long! because treated unjustly, riot it must be white, but it is possible that the indignation the crowd feels is mainly been treated unjustly, If one rejects these starting places and looks: or even entirely against the police rather than against whites as such, , although; Negro village of Kinlock, at the facts instead, one sees that race , poverty, and injustice (In September 1962, Negroes in the allamong the conditions that made the larger riots possible , were not the! Missouri, rioted when a Negro policeman shot a Negro youth, of them and had very little to do with many of the lesser ones, Indeed, some members of the crowd may be indignant at whites, causes Indeed, it is probably not too much to say that

some

of the riots would!

others at the police, and still others at both whites and the police, and have occurred even if (other things being the same) the people in the, so it might be impossible to say whether or not the riot was " mainly riot areas had all been white and even if they had all had incomes\ racial " even if one had full knowledge of the subjective states of all above the poverty line, The possibility of a riot exists wherever thew rioters. In the final case , the event is a demonstration carried on for are crowds of people 3 and an " explanation " of the Negro riots which! the express purpose of calling attention to a political position; since fails to take account of the generality of the phenomenon of civil! the position is a racist one, the riot can properly be called racial. disorder is inadequate, Distinctions should be drawn along analytical! Each of these four motivations implies a riot of a certain character. lines so that they will provide " building blocks " from which ani As a basis for the analysis of more complicated events, it will be account of all sorts of riots in all sorts of places may be constructed,! useful to describe four " simple types" of riot as follows: spirits, Young men, This is an outbreak of high The rampage, (I) Two thousand juveniles break windows after an amusement restless, in search of excitement, thrills, especially, are naturally park closes early, leaving them without transportation, explained, they are apt to feel smashes the clothing store and action, " Also, as David Matza has (2) A gang of hoodlums robs a mood of fatalism (as pushed around" ; one who is caught in this display windows of three other stores, stealing watches, cammake things Matza calls it) wants dramatic reassurance that he can " eras, and rings, to him happen, " and breaking the law is one of the few actions open 4 Rioting (3) A young man has been shot and killed by the police during a " pelts the This is for Willie, that immediately and demonstrably makes things happen, burglary, and a crowd, shouting " (which Matza does not mention) is a way of making them happen on a police with rocks, bottles, and fire bombs, racist politician , a mob wholesale scale, " These young people, to whom a voter registration (4) Following an inflammatory speech by a campaign, a picket line, or an economic boycott means very little, have overturns automobiles and assaults motorists, found that they can stun an entire community by engaging in rioting, To that strict behaviorist , the man on the moon , all four of these They can mobilize entire police forces and National Guard compaevents probably look alike: all are " riots " and, if the rioters are nies, keep mayors at their desks through the night, and bring repreNegro, presumably " racial." But to an observer able and willing to sentatives of the news media from all over the country, for examp'le , an take motives into account (that is, to take note of the meaning of an A rampage may start either with an incident " If it starts with or " out of the blue, act to the actor) the events are very different and some are not in any argument or an arrest agers who sense racial. The first is a rampage by frustrated teenincident , the incident is more in the nature of a pretext than (as in a happen to be black, Tl.!~ second is a foray for pillage by young toughs riot of the outburst of indignation type) a provocation; that is, the who find " taking" things the easiest way of getting them, In this case , I rampage begins not because the incident made the rampagers angry too, race is not a motive and is in fact irrelevant to behavior: the

214 / THE UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED

RIOTING MAINLY FOR FUN AND PROFIT / 215

(although they may pretend that) but because they were " looking fori restlessness of youth and to encourage its sublimation, In the lower trouble " or at least were in a mood to seize upon an excuse (signal?) to: classes, on the other hand, cultural norms reinforce feelings of restclass youths rampage, There is no pattern to the violence once it starts: it involves lessness and the " mood of fatalism, " Accordingly, lowerdestruction for the sake of destruction and fighting for the sake of are more apt than others to be caught up in frenzies of mob activity, fighting. The police are frequently attacked by rampagers; this is not and even adults of the lower class are, by comparison with those of the because they are hated (although they may be) but because they are at other classes, highly susceptible to the same influences, Here the motive is theft, and here also boys The foray for pillage. hand and will put up a good fight. Rampaging byteen-agers has offenders, always been a problem in the cities, From the very earliest times, I and young adults of the lower class are the principal , but harassing the watch , vandalism , and arson have been favorite pas- Stealing is ordinarily most conveniently done in private, of course , blizzards, earthquakes, fires , floods, power failures times of the young. 6 In Pittsburgh in 1809 an editor proposed satiri- when disasters interrupt law enforcement it may cally that the city establish a " conflagration fund" from which to buy enemy invasions, police strikes Everytwelve houses, one to be burned each month in a civil celebration, be done as well or better in public, On these occasions, when " Until the middle of the last century fire companies in the large cities one is doing it" and " If I don t take the stuff it will just go to waste were manned by volunteers, mostly boys and young men , and were in i upper-working- and middle- class adults who , under normal circumlithe many cases what today would be called conflict gangs, Whether they stances, would not steal , are likely to join the looters, (In I7 taking advanput out more fires than they started is a question, In Philadelphia , for ! selectmen of Boston passed an act to punish persons " rob, plunder example , firemen used to riot almost every Sunday, using bricks, tage of such confusion and calamities (as fire) to stones, and firearms, apparently with intent to kilL8 In the slums of embezzle , convey away and conceal the goods and effects of their the large cities there were also street gangs, some claiming more than distressed neighbours, "12) From the standpoint of the youth or of the a thousand members, which fought each other and the police almost lower- class adult who makes a practice of stealing, it would be seldom started by constantly. 9 Usually the authorities did not try very hard to interfere convenient to have a riot every day, Riots are with these activities , which were regarded as in the nature of sport- thieves merely to facilitate stealing, however. One reason is that the ing events. culture of the lower class renders it incapable of the planning riotand by Youth rampages occur today not only in the slums but elsewhere, organization that would ordinarily be necessary to start a Thousands of college boys rioted at Hampton Beach , New Hamp- design, Another and perhaps more important one is that although all shire , and at Seaside , Oregon , in 1964, the year the inner-city riots thieves would benefit from a riot, no one thief would benefit enough began , and there have been large rampages of white boys on the from it to justify his taking the trouble and running the risks of , the riot is, from the Sunset Strip of Los Angeles , in Atlantic City, and elsewhere since, It starting it. (As an economist would put it"13) But if thieves rarely is not only American boys who behave this way, but boys almost standpoint of the thieves, a " collective good, everywhere, In Stockholm , for example, hordes of teen-agers hang start riots, they are always quick to join ones that are under way, and around the subway stations committing acts of vandalism and harass- their presence in sufficient number may transform one from, say, a ing the police, " The police say that if a constable has to arrest a drunk rampage to a foray for pillage. " I really know of no instance of a riot who is disturbing the peace , the youngsters will often set upon the occurring in New York, or in any other: large city, during which " New York' s Police Chief policeman, and a major riot looms before reinforcements can be robbery did not playa prominent part, "l1 Probably many of the student " political demonstrations called, Walling wrote toward the end of the last century.14 Here the rioters are moved The outburst of righteous indignation, reported in this and other countries are actually rampages, In the upper classes the norms of culture tend to restrain the by indignation at what they regard, rightly or wrongly, as injustice or

,"

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violation of the mores that is likely to go unpunished, Their indig- : nation is partly at the wrongfulness of the act

and partly at the

wrongfulness of its going unpunished, A riot of this type is always I spontaneous people do not become indignant according to plan. Indignation is aroused by an incident of some sort (which may, of course ,

have been contrived by someone for the purpose), and in the

nature of the case ,

the indignant people are without leaders, The incident itself may help to make up for this lack by serving a coord i- ~ nating function; as Thomas C. Schelling has pointed out Without something like an incident , it may be difficult to get action at all

"15

since immunity requires that all know when to act together. A righteously indignant mob usually consists mainly of workingclass people, The lower- class individual is too alienated to be capable i of much indignation , especially in a matter that he thinks does not affect him personally and directly; middle- and upper- class people are

usually confident of their ability to get wrongs righted by making appeals through proper channels, and , besides , they abhor violence. The working class is not under any of these limitations: it has a capacity for righteous indignation, distrusts lawyers, public relations people , and " channels " generally, and does not greatly mindindeed , sometimes very much enjoys - a good brawl and the spilling

of some blood, Under favorable circumstances, that is, where the working class is

large and consists of people who have enough in common so that they will respond with indignation to the same provocation , an outburst of far more righteous indignation may involve a great many people

certainly, than a rampage or a foray, both of which by their nature ordinarily draw upon relatively small " constituencies, " All the large riots of the nineteenth century were mainly outbursts of righteous I indignation. Some of them were very large indeed, For example , the Boston riot of 1837 (an American-born working- class attack on Irish immigrants) is supposed to have involved more than 15, 000 persons roughly one-sixth of the city s population, In an outburst of righteous indignation the pattern of violence and

217

Strikers tended to the mob imposes a conception of " natural justice ' houses; food rioters ' their employers pull down destroy machinery or ' to invade markets and bakers ' shops and enforce a popular price rural rioters to destroy fences and taxation populaire; control or

turnpikes or threshing machines and workhouses, or to set fire to the farmer s or landlord' s stacks; and city rioters to ' pull down ' dissenters ' houses and meeting houses and chapels, to destroy their victims "16 property, and to burn their political enemies in effigy, Here the motive is to advance a political prinThe demonstration. ciple or ideology or to contribute to the maintenance of an organization, The riot is not a spontaneous, angry response to an incident. . Rather, it is the result of prearrangement by persons who are organized, have leaders , and who see it as a means to some end, The word demonstration " is descriptive , for the event is a kind of show staged to influence opinion, Those who put it on are usually middle or upper class , these being the classes from which the people who run organiza-

tions and espouse political causes are mostly drawn. Demonstrations characteristically involve breach of the public peace rather than vio-

lence (if they involve neither they are by definition not riots); the middle- and upper- class cultural style favors the use of mock violence

(for example , the spraying of slogans with paint and the throwing of steer s blood), " happenings " (for example , halting traffic with police whistles), and behavior calculated to make the demonstrator the object , or the apparent object , of violence inflicted either by himself

(as when he chains himself to something) or by the authorities (as when he " goes limp ), The middle and upper classes ' abhorrence of violence is so great that techniques like these

, which trade upon it

without requiring the demonstrator to hurt anyone but himself (and usually not himself either), are often effective as a means of putting the other side " at a moral disadvantage in the eyes of the middle- and upper-class television viewers for whose benefit the demonstration is staged,

destruction reflects the mob' s""wish to end, and also to redress or avenge , the wrong that aroused its indignation. As Rude says in his

These four types of riots are presented as analytical models, Some concrete riots very closely approximate a " pure " type , but what a , . . too many historian has said of mob violence in early Boston

account of popular disturbances in preindustrial France and England

types of people took to the streets for too many reasons for any single

""

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RIOTING MAINLY FOR FUN AND PROFIT

formula to apply "! 7 can be said of most riots, All large ones , it seems safe to say, are compounds of at least two of the types, The New York Draft Riot of 1863, for example , was a compound of at least three, It was a rampage of young toughs from the slums (three- fourths of those actively engaged in violence were boys and men under twenty years of

age who were not subject to the draft , a Times writer estimated; it was a foray for pillage (houses and places of business were ransacked all along Eleventh Avenue); and it was also and perhaps mainly outburst of righteous indignation on the part of the Irish working class I

at the prospect of having to compete with freed Negroes for jobs and l against the alleged injustices of the draft law, I8 Large riots tend to be compound, if for no other reason , simply because they attract looters, But it is likely that the fact of their being compound also tends to make them larger: that is , that interaction among types of rioters tends to reinforce the motives and heighten the activity of each type, I For example ,

the looters and rampagers in the Draft Riot no doubt

got some moral support from having all about them rioters motivated

by righteous indignation; at the same time , the presence of the looters and rampagers , most of whom were not clearly identifiable as such must have added to the general sense of confusion and frenzy and by so doing must have helped sustain the fury of the righteously indigtwo Negroes and I nant. That these latter had objects of indignation must also have increased the interaction, One may I the draft law conjecture that the greater the variety of motivational elements appealed to, the larger the number of rioters who will be recruited

and what is more important the more interaction tending to sustain and escalate the riot there will be among the rioters, Looking from this perspective at the series of inner-city riots

one is struck by the fact that for twenty

years prior to July 18,

1964, there had been very few riots by Negroes , and that these few with only one exception, had been protests against racial injustice, In 1961, for example , white mobs in six cities attacked Negroes , but I

there were no riots by Negroes, riots

" "

In 1962 there were four Negro

one was a demonstration by Black Muslims, two seem to have

been outbursts of righteous indignation provoked

by incidents of

alleged police brutality, and the fourth , the exception , was a rampage

by high school students after a football game in the District of Columbia stadium, In 1963 and the first half of 1964 there were

2I9

eleven Negro riots, all apparently outbursts of righteous indignation and all but three occurring in the South, In none of these years was one involving several hundred rioters and there a major Negro riot lasting more than a day,

On July 18, 1964, a riot began in Harlem that proved to be a

turning point. Two days before , an off- duty white police lieutenant had shot and killed a fifteen- year-old Negro youth whom he said had attacked him with a knife, A mixed jury exonerated the police officer of wrongdoing, but the incident created widespread anger, After the youth' s funeral there was a mass meeting; as the crowd poured out of it "

someone apparently shoved someone who shoved back,

the

mounting tension of weeks and months snapped, and in an instant the melee was on, In the chaos, " the writer continues, " the junkies, the winos , and down- and-outers and the plain lawless ones with little

interest in politics or human rights gathered from Seventh Avenue and its shabby tributaries to make what profit they could in looting, , , , "20 The next evening there was another mass meeting, A Black Nationalist " priest " made an inflammatory speech and then led a group of youths in a march on a nearby police station, A crowd

pelted the station with bottles and stones, After three days in Harlem, the riot moved to the Bedford- Stuyvesant district of Brooklyn and six days later, for no apparent reason, to Rochester, (The incident

an attempt by a policeman to arrest a drunk and disorderly

seems to have been a pretext rather adolescent at a street dance than a provocation, ) A few days later the rioting spread, also for no apparent reason, to three New Jersey cities, an industrial suburb of Chicago, and Philadelphia, In Harlem , when it first broke out , the rioting was mainly an outburst of righteous indignation at the police, There was little looting; the mob was chiefly occupied in bitter fighting with the police, As

the rioting continued and moved to other cities, however, its nature changed, Looting and rock throwing became the mob' s principal

activities , with attacks on the police sporadic and incidental. In Rochester , the city manager said later , the riot had " racial overtones but was not actually a race riot, 21 In Philadelphia , the first policeman

attacked was a Negro, Nowhere did a Negro mob invade

a white

neighborhood or assault whites as such, Opinion leaders and publicists did not at this time see the riots as

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RIOTING MAINLY FOR FUN AND PROFIT

22 I

220 / THE UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED

manifestations of deep unrest or anger on the part of Negroes. Roy

Wilkins, the executive director of the NAACP, said that the riots and brazen looting " had " brought shame upon the civil rights movement

: the suspicion was widespread, he added, that people have been paid to start and keep them going. " CORE Direc-

of a whole people

tor James Farmer and Urban League Director Whitney Young, Jr.

agreed that this was a possibility. Young thought that the riots would benefit Communist and right-wing groups by " sowing confusion and creating hostility between whites and Negroes. "22 At the end of the summer , J. Edgar Hoover , whose views were probably close to one end of the spectrum, reported to the President that although racial not even the tensions had been a factor , none of the disorders

Harlem one

was a race riot in the accepted meaning of the term

(that is , race against race); they were , he said purposeless attacks in which youths were responsible for most of the violence , and he

classed them with the college- boy riots that occurred about the same time. 23 Others made similar assessments, Most civil rights leaders dismissed the idea that the riots were conscious protests; that was not merely an after- the- fact rationalization, Kenneth B. Clark said, it was an " independent of the fact " one. 24 Bayard Rustin was applauded by an audience of New York planners when he explained that the violence was caused by " merely a few confused Negro boys throwing stones in windows or a Molotov cocktail at a cop who was perfectly capable of ducking. "25 The police commissioner of New York said in effect that they were rampages and forays. " They riot either out of sheer cussedness or for criminal reasons , and in some instances because mob action seems to be taking on the aspects of a fad. . . . Bedevil the police , strip stores, shout and yell , crush anyone who opposes you. , . and if the police try to stop it , just yell ' brutality.'

This is the pattern. . . . "26

Speaking that winter at a symposium on

new varieties of violence , Allen D. Grimshaw , a sociologist , explained

that the Negroes who had fought the police and looted were not the same ones who had been engaging in peaceful demonstrations: they

"27 .,.~

were , rather, " the lower- class apathetics , the new-style ents. . . .

indiffer-

The opinion that the riots did not reflect attitudes that were widespread among Negroes was consistent with the findings of an elabo-

rate survey of Negro opinion made late in 1964 by Gary T. Marx. It

showed that most Negroes were neither sunk in hopelessness

nor

consumed with anger. Only about a third were in any sense militant, and the proportion of Negroes who were strongly antiwhite was much smaller. Most thought that things were getting better for the Negro (81 percent of a sample in non- Southern metropolitan areas thought this), that America was worth fighting for (87 percent), that a day would come when whites would fully accept Negroes (70 percent), and that the police treated Negroes either fairly well or very well (59 " Marx percent). " The overwhelming majority of those questioned, concluded, " felt that progress is being made and that integration is being pushed by the government at the right speed and were optimis-

tic about the future, "28 That most Negroes held these opinions does

not necessarily mean that the rioters held them, of course; in fact however, there is some reason to suppose that most of them did. the The 1964 riot pattern was repeated the following August inusual

Watts district of Los Angeles.

This was not a slum in the

sense (it was an area of single- family, detached houses, most of which

were in good condition), and Los Angeles was a city in which the Negro fared better than in most places (the Urban League rated it first " drawn among sixty-eight cities on the basis of a " statistical portrait in 1964). In this case , too, the incident that supposedly set off the riot could hardly have aroused a great deal of righteous indignation (a s license had been drunken Negro motorist unable to produce a driver arrested in what seems to have been a proper manner). Apparently, the incident was mainly important as a pretext for a rampage by teen-age Negro boys and young men who began throwing whiskey and beer bottles and pieces of asphalt and cement at motorists on Avalon Boulevard. :!O Two hours after the incident the mob, which then numbered about fifteen hundred, consisted mostly of these boys and young men. There was nothing " racial" about what they were doing. who were One thing that impressed me was that these Negroes own people.

hurling stones were throwing them right into their riot. These That's why I believe this didn t start out to be a race were just young hoodlums working off their frustrations. They were out to do destruction. They just wanted to hurt anybody, black or white. "31 " The riot, " Oberschall has written in what is probably

,"

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RIOTING MAINLY FOR FUN AND PROFIT / 223

the best sociological analysis of any of the large riots was a collec, however. The facts tive celebration in the manner of a carnival , during which about 40 account of what the rioters were revolting against liquor stores were broken into and much liquor consumed. It was did not support the view that they were expressing hatred for the also a collective contest similar to that between two athletic teams, I white man; even Rustin said the rebellion was against the Negro very well the view that with the supporters cheering and egging on the contestants. One own masochism. " Nor did the facts support s words) they " would no the rioters were asserting that (in Rustin could settle old scores with the police , show them who really con; after all, most trolled the territory, humiliate them and teach them a lesson. . . . ! longer quietly submit to the deprivation of slum life Watts people lived comfortably in fairly good housing. It was some(M) any Negroes saw it as a victory for their side and derived a what more plausible to claim that they were angry about mistreatment sense of pride and accomplishment from this public demonstration , but even this view did not fit the facts entirely, for the by the police of their collective power. "32 rioters had shown themselves more interested in burning and looting The statistics on arrests at Watts provide

some slight basis for inferences about the motives of the rioters. About 15 percent of those

than in fighting the police.

arrested were juveniles. (The percentage would have been much

something to be proud of - a kind of black Bunker Hill.

higher , it has been suggested , were it not for the fact that the police being short- handed , arrested the people who were easiest to catch. ) Of the 3, 438 adults arrested , nearly one- third had been convicted of major crimes (that is, crimes for which they had received sentences of more than ninety days) and fully one- third had minor records (that is arrest or conviction with a sentence of ninety days or less), 33 Since the police may be quicker to arrest Negroes than whites, it is hard to say what significance should be attached to the proportion having minor records. It is more noteworthy that one- third had never been arrested.

The riot , according to Oberschall , drew participants from all social strata in the area and cannot be attributed to the lawless and rootless

minority, although doubtless members of this minority were active in it. It is best seen , he writes as a large scale collective action , with a wide , representative base in the lower-class Negro communities which , however much it gained the sympathy of the more economi-

cally well-off Negroes, remained a violent lower- class

outburst

throughout. "34

Although the Watts rioters , like those in New York the year before

proclaimed no aims, put no demands before the authorities or the press , and made no effort to organize their resistance to police and firemen , Negro spokesmen this time at once declared that the event was political- it was , the~)nsisted , a revolt , not a riot. 35 Bayard Rustin wrote that it was carried on for an " express purpose " and was the first major rebellion. "36 No one gave a very clear or convincing

However unjustifiably, Watts was regarded by many Negroes as This

definition tended to make the rioting of the year before appear retrospect as a kind of black Concord and Lexington and to establish a moral basis for any battles that might yet be fought in a black

Revolution. The view now fast gained acceptance , among white as well as black opinion leaders, that the riots were spontaneous expressions of anger and frustration at continued injustice

that in the

main they were politically motivated and therefore not riots at all but " disorders " (if one wished to express solidarity with the black masses), Very possibly this change of view was in some degree

self-justifying: the more widely and authoritatively the riots were described as political , the more they became so in fact. As this interpretation would lead one to expect , the frequency of rioting increased after Watts. In 1966 , there were eleven major (that is, two- day or more) and thirty- two minor riots , and in 1967 there were twenty- five major and thirty minor riots. In most instances, the

rioting began either without any precipitating

incident

, boys and

young men simply smashing windows, starting fires, arid assaulting passers- by for no apparent reason , or with an incident that was pretext rather than a provocation. Only two of the major riots in 1966 (those in Jacksonville ,

Florida ,

and SimFrancisco) seem to have

started from a provocation and only eight (six of which were in Southern cities) of those in 1967 seem to have started from provocations.

The Detroit riot of 1967, although vastly more destructive , was in

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RIOTING MAINLY FOR FUN AND PROFIT

225

many ways typical. Like Los Angeles, Detroit was a city of relative It would appear , then, that what requires explanation is not so prosperity and opportunity for the Negro; it had no real " ghetto " and i much rebellion by Negroes (whether against the whites, the slum, its police had for several years been under very enlightened and i their " own masochism, " the police , or something else) as it is outdetermined leadership, The incident with which the riot started seems breaks of the " carnival spirit " and of stealing by slum dwellers, to have been a pretext rather than a provocation: when the police mostly boys and young men and mostly Negro, 4O (A few non- Negroes raided a speakeasy early one Sunday morning, a crowd began pelting participated, mostly as looters, in the Detroit riot and possibly in the policemen with stones. This might not have led to a riot were it not some of the others , and one major riot , a rampage- foray for which for the fact that at that particular time very few policemen could be there seems to have been no precipitating incident , was carried on mustered, (Early Sunday morning was a " low crime " period and the I entirely by Puerto Rican youths in Perth Amboy, New Jersey, at the stronger daytime shift was not scheduled to report for duty at precinct end ofJuly 1966, stations until 8 A, ) For several critical hours the police were conIn framing an explanation , it will be useful to begin by listing spicuous by their absence, It was well known , too , that the police certain events (" accelerating causes ), each of which independently would not use their guns except in the most extreme circumstances. increased th~ probability of such riots occurring, This listing will be For five or six hours after the speakeasy raid Negroes and whites followed by a description of a set of states (" background causes ), the probability of their some mingled on the streets and looted amicably side by side, On the concurrent existence of which established second day of the riot Governor Romney said that it was " not occurring, Without attempting to pass on their relative primarily a civil rights disturbance but rather lawlessness and hoodAccelerating causes, lumism by Negroes and whites " an opinion with which Mayor importance , several such causes may be listed, Cavanagh agreed, 38 Almost all the arrests made were for looting, and I. Sensational television coverage enabled rioters to watch the 42 and, what was of those arrested nearly half were aged nineteen through twenty- four. movements of police and so move to evade them, The pattern of destruction was what one would expect in a foray for probably more important , recruited ram pagers, pillagers, and others pillage. Stores having things that could be consumed directly to the scene, As the mayor of Plainfield , New Jersey, explained The liquor, cigarettes, drugs , clothing, television sets , appliances, furniture sensational coverage of the Newark riot showed persons looting stores were looted no matter who owned them, Stores having things that while the police took no action to halt them, This view"43 of Prior looting to would have to be " fenced" jewelry were usually left untouched appealed directly to the criminal and susceptible element. as were all buildings symbolic of the " white power structure the advent of television, it would have been very difficult for the banks, public offices, and schools, As one of the rioters, a child , exauthorities to have brought the possibilities for fun and profit in plained, " There was nothing to steal in the school. Who wants a rioting to the attention of the lower class even if they had wanted to do book or a desk?" " This is not a riot " one of the rioters was later so. Lower- class people do not read newspapers , but nearly all of them quoted as saying, have at least one television set. 44 (To be sure , the lower class was only one element among the rioters, It is safe to say, however, that it was A lot of people have a misconception of it. This is nothing but - like the responsible for more than its proportionate share of the most reckless man said pure lawlessness, People was trying to get what they could get. and destructive acts, The police was letting them take it. They wasn t stopping it , so I said it was 2, By carrying vivid accounts of rioting to cities all over the time for me to get some of these diamonds and watches and rings, It wasn that I was mad at anyone er angry or trying to get back at the white man, country, television not only eliminated the necessity that would otherThey was having a good time , really enjoying themselves until them fools wise have existed for the independent discovery of certain techniques started shooting, of rioting (for example , the use of fire bombs) but also, and especially,

227 RIOTING MAINLY FOR FUN AND PROFIT

226 / THE UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED

of it, That by throwing rocks, smashing it established the , and setting fires one can throw a great city into turmoil is windows something that the ordinary person does not recognize until it happossibility

pens. Once the possibility of an action has been established, the probability of someone s taking it is very much increased, " Some cats come in the bar and talk about how they are going to start burning again next month - down about Broadway. Mostly, it is just talk, but they know that they could do it. "45 The main point here is that , thanks

, knowledge that " they could do it" was widely disseminated to people who otherwise would have been slow to discover it for themselves. In 1935 and 1943 Harlem had riots , but for lack of television coverage these did not provide a model that was known and imitated in cities all over the United States,

to television

3, The rioters knew that they had little or nothing to fear from the

police and the courts, Under the pressure of the civil rights movement and of court decisions and as the result of the growing " professionalism" of police administrators (these developments, in turn , being consequences of " middle- class- ification " of the population), the patrolman s discretion in the use of force declined rapidly after the

war. At the same time courts were lenient with juvenile offenders, Tough kids " had always attacked policemen when they got the chance, but by the 1960 S the amount of toughness required was not very great ,

for in most cities it became more and more apparent that a policeman who shot a boy would be in serious trouble, Not being able threat of it. It was to use force , the police could not effectively use the not uncommon for a gang of boys to disarm and beat a policeman who, following orders, would not use his gun against them, During a

because their offenses riot, the police were especially ineffective were not very serious , most rioters could not be successfully threatened; the only thing that could be done with them was to take them into custody, and this was something the police were seldom numerous enough to do. Sometimes the police had to stand by and allow

looting to go on before their eyes. This , of course , increased the tempo of the rioting. Those first hours , when the cops pulled out , were just like a holiday, recalls one young man who joined in the looting of shops on 12th Street that morning, " All the kids wandered around sayin , real amazed like , 'The fuzz is scared; they ain t goin ' to do nothin .' I remember one day me and

t any teachers another kid, we was locked in the school and there wasn d been wantin ' to do for a around and we had a ball, we did all the things we

long time, We set some fires in the baskets and we emptied the teachers desks and we stuck a whole mess of toiletpaper "46in the principal's mailbox, Well, that s what it was like out on the Street.

was increased by several factors that 4, The probability of rioting tended to give it legitimacy in the eyes of potential rioters, One was a

feeling on the part of many people that they were not getting what they deserved when compared to whites or even to affluent Negroes, or, more likely, because of relatively large recent Despite

, many Negroes were frustrated improvements in income and status and angry that their progress was not as fast as they believed it would be if they were treated fairly. There was also a belief, widespread and in general amply justified by the facts, that Negroes were frequently harassed and insulted and sometimes brutally beaten by the police, (Police brutality had recently been brought to the forefront of public attention by vivid television portrayals of outrages against civil-rights 48) Another factor was a barrage of statements workers in the South, s problems as by leaders of both races that represented the Negro entirely, or almost entirely, the result of racial injustice, implying that affluence. Another only white racism stood between the Negro and was the discovery that rioting was possible; as David Matza points out experience that an with reference to juveniles, learning through childish be done leads, by an illogic characteristic of can infraction 49 Another factor was be done, may thought, to the conclusion that it

every-

the spread of the rioting to several cities; the knowledge that " body is doing it" tended, by more childish illogic, to the conclusion If they can do it in Detroit , we that doing it could not be very wrong, " can do it here " Milwaukee teen-agers cried as they began smashing store windows. But what probably did most to rioting seema themake Watts riot was legitimate was acceptance of the claim that some political purpose. revolt" and that the rioting everywhere had Byron Washington, the Waterloo, Iowa, youth whose words appear at the head of this chapter, doubtless threw his stone with the strength of ten because he knew (having heard it over television perhaps) that he was not a boy out raising hell but a victim, explanations of injustice fighting for a that find the

college education. Whether correct or not cause of rioting in the rioters' environment are bound to be taken as

RIOTING MAINLY FOR FUN AND PROFIT / 229

228 / THE UNHEAVENL Y CITY REVISITED

justifications, or at any rate extenuations , of their behavior and there- ' could not be at all sure that the measures they were proposing, some were so vague a ~ t~ be fore tend to reinforce the irresponsibility that is characteristic of the of which for example pursue justice , 50 age and class culture from which rioters are largely drawn Rustin almost meaningless, would have any tendency to prevent r~otmg; may , have been right in , saying that the looters were " members of a moreover, they had little or no reason to believe that their makmg the ~pr ~ved group who seIzed a chance to possess things that all the prediction would bring about the adoption of the measures th dmmng affluence of Los Angeles has never given them, "5! But , right advocated, Rustin, for example, could not have suppo ~ed that hIS PresIden~ to ask or wrong, the effect of such statements was to make it easier for the words to the Senate subcommittee would cause the program" T?e one thmg the potential rioter to justif~ his, behavior , an~ t~er ~fore the statements for a larger increase in the poverty appear mo ,2 One can see this was to make notIng were themselves a contrIbutIng cause of notIng: likely to do were edictions 57 (Even so, in fairness to Rustm process clearly enough in something a twenty- year-old Watts rioter ral normal and hence ustifiable. saId to a reporter: The whIte power structure looks on us as hood- and others it must be pointed out that civil rights leaders a a u lums when actually we are deprived people, to ress hard for change, probability ,of riotmg ofthe any If explaining th ~ riots ~ended , to justify them , so did predicting For there to be ~ackground causes, them, One who saId that If drastic measures were not taken to end kind hereunder discussion, several conditions had to exIst con currently, injustice riots could be expected might be correct , but correct or not I, Without a large supply of boys and young men, most of them wou~d be his words would help form an impression in the public mind that lower-working or lower class, to draw upon, major riots IS n rioting is a n ~ral and perhaps even laudab le r~sponse to the continu- impossible, One may not share McPhail' ~ opinion that there ~use of theIr ance of an , InJustice, From the very begInnIn g of the , civil rights compelling reason to think persons " ~ore Impetuous bec , disench ~nted

'" "5:J nau

move ~ent ItS leaders have been wont to predIct that vIOlence will youth , more daring because of theIr gender, more

educatIOnal occur If reforms are not accepted at a faster pace; the riots, of course because of their race , or less rational because of theIr persons are ~a?e ~hese predictions ~uch ~ore credible and therefore gave the level" to agree with him that it is important that such ~mount of cIvIl-fIghts leaders mo ~e Incentive than ever to make them, 54 At the " more available for participation by virtue of the large end of 1966, Dr. MartIn Luther King, Jr., after acknowledging that unscheduled or uncommitted time which results from bemg young, a prediction of violence can sometimes be an invitation to it " went black male , and without educational credentials in the urban gheton to predict that " failure to pursue justice " would result in more tos, 8 In the 1920 S and 1930 S (as was explained in Chapter Two)

riots, 55 Rustin, at about the same time , told a Senate subcommittee the number of such people in the inner cities was very much re~uced the agIng of that if the President asked for only ~ small increase in funds for the from what it had been in the previous century because o~ the relatIvely w ~lbo~f poverty program , ~~e Negro leadershIp " can no longer ?e responsible the immigrant population and the movement o~ ~IOn It ~ Depres for ,:"hat happens; and Senator Robert Kennedy said that to outlying neighborhoods and suburbs. Dunng th major steps " were taken " we will reap a whirlwind that will looked for a while as if the inner-city slums and semisiums mIght be completely uncontrollable, 56 Even if these predictions had been permanently depopulated. During and after the war, ho :-vev ~r, the mIgratIOn" thIS based on actual knowledge , and even if by making them districts were filled or nearly filled once again by a new RICO). only by making them - it had been possible to secure the needed one from the rural South (and , in New York, from Puerto , the newcomers reforms , one would have to say that making the predictions increased Being a young population with a very high birthrate ~treets ~han, had been the probability of ~here b ~ing, riot ~; o~viously, it was impossible for quickly put more boys and young men on the the reforms to achIeve theIr effect In time to prevent what was being ere before, The new (black) generation of Inner-city youth was pre Icte, ea IstIcally, however , those who made the predictions also more prone to violence than the earlier (white) ones,

unless

be

and

231

RIOTING MAINLY FOR FUN AND PROFIT

230 / THE UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED

2. The lower- and lower-working- class

people who now comprise much of the inner-city residential population are largely cut off from participation in institutions that in times past regulated and restrained the behavior of people whose class culture and situation were similar to theirs, Racial discrimination, although obviously a factor, is not the main thing that cuts them off from these institutions; rather, what cuts

them off is the changes that have occurred in the nature of the

power-

prison s equilibrium. When the custodians strip him of his when the custodians destroy the system of illicit privileges, of prefer-

ential treatment and laxity which has functioned to increase the influence of the cohesively-oriented prisoner who stands for the value the unstable elements in the inmate popuof keeping things quiet

lation have an opportunity to capitalize on the tensions of prison life "59 and to rise into dominance. The stage has been set for insurrection. class,

number of upper-working-class, middle-

3. A considerable institutions because of the " middle- class-ification " of the population and upper- class people who have made large income and status gains , the volunteer fire of this country, In the last century, for example in recent years and are impatient to make even larger gains lives in the company gave boys and young men of the lower classes opportunities to express high spirits under conditions that were to some degree inner city in close physical proximity to the lower classes, Upwardly each other usually for the " honor " of mobile members of earlier slum populations very quickly left not only controlled: the firemen fought their companies. Today, of course , fire departments are run on a the slum but the inner city as well, and usually the neighborhoods they vacated were occupied by some different newly arrived ethnic group. professional basis and are open only to mature men who have placed In the case of the Negro, the outward movement has been rather slow, well in an examination. More or less the same thing has happened in partly because of job and housing discrimination and partly because , in the

politics. Not so long ago party machines labored to establish claims on

even the lowest of the low; the trading of jobs and favors in return for loyalty tended to create some sort of bond between the individual and the government, Now that the machine , precinct captain, and corner saloon have been replaced by the welfare bureaucracy, the nonpartisan election, and the candidate who makes his appeal on television,

the lower classes no longer participate in politics and are therefore no longer held by any of the old ties. Even in criminal activities there has been the same trend. Like fire- fighting and politics, the money-making kinds of crime (as opposed to " kid stuff' ) are orgaand therefore to exert no discinized in such a way as to exclude the irresponsible and incapable. pline upon This exclusion from institutions of those who are not able or willing to participate on the terms set by the now predominant middle class has the effect of reducing the influence within the lower classes of

those persons who , although not able to perform according to the standard set by the middle class ,

could nevertheless lead and set an less able memand thus place some restraint upon example for bers of their class. The situation is strikingly like that which , when it occurs in prisons, is said, to cause riots. " It is the cohesively-oriented prisoner committed to the values of inmate loyalty, generosity, endurance , and the curbing of frictions who does much to maintain the

moreover many Negroes want to live near other Negroes; moved away have have case of the Negro, the places of those who

usually been taken by newly arriving Negroes. Upwardly mobile Negroes who for one reason or another live in or near the slum tend, of course , to be very sensitive to the dangers and unpleasantnesses of slum life and to blame them not on conditions common to the white , and so , low income and the Negro (for example , lower- class culture imaginary. If, on) but on racial injustice past and present, real and, these Negroes like the upwardly mobile members of earlier groups slums, they would not be

Jived in suburbs far from the inner-city

available physically (and perhaps psychologically) for participation in actively in large

riots. As it is they do not participate in them

numbers, They do provide enough politically motivated rioters, how, it was argued ever, to make possible the interaction effect that

earlier, tends to escalate a rampage- foray into a major riot. Even who do not participate in the rioting tend to help legitimate it in the eyes of potential rioters by putting forward or concurring in the claim that it has a political purpose, from this Several conclusions bearing on policy may be drawn analysis. One is that there is likely to be more rioting for many years

, those

,"

232 / THE UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED

to come , and this no matter what is done to prevent it, 6O

RIOTING MAINLY FOR FUN AND PROFIT

So long as

there are large concentrations of boys and young men of the lower classes on the streets , rampages and forays are to be expected, Without some support from righteously indignant member s of the working class and from politically minded members of the middle and upper

classes, such outbreaks probably will not reach the scale that was reached in Los Angeles, Newark , and Detroit , but even so some of them will probably be well beyond the ability of local police forces to

deal with. Eventually, much of the inner-city population will move to the suburbs; this change , which is already under way, will reduce the potential for very large riots by physically separating the lower class

from the working class and the working class from the middle and upper classes and thus (I) curtailing the number of persons available in anyone place as recruits for a riot and (2) making interaction between rioters of different motivational types (for example , rampagers and demonstrators) less likely, For at least another twenty years however, there will be enough potential rioters of all types in the inner cities to produce frequent rampage- forays and some major riots, Six years after the holocausts in Detroit and Newark no one any longer worried at the prospect of another " long, hot summer. " Like l the Beatles and their music, riots were remembered as a " craze " that i

had come and gone, In fact after 1967 there were many small riots and one or two that would have been called major before 1964- 1 967,

That riots on the scale of those years did not occur and did not

seem likely to was sometimes

explained on the grounds that

the

earlier ones had been cathartic (with one possible exception , no city

that had a major riot had a second one), There were other explanations to supplement this one, Television and news coverage of small riots had become extremely circumspect (in 1968 a major riot in New York City went almost unreported), Police forces were known to have become equipped and trained to act effectively at the first signs of trouble, It is naive to think that efforts to end racial injustice and to eliminate poverty, slums, and unemployment will have an appreciable effect upon the amount of rioting that will be done in the next decade or two. These efforts are not likely to be very serious or , if they are very successful. But even if they are both serious and successful they

233

will not significantly affect the factors that produce riots, Boys and young men of the lower classes will not cease to " raise hell" once they have adequate job opportunities, housing, schools, and so on, Indeed,

by the standards of any former time , they had these things in the 1960 S, It may be that in time good opportunities and a high standard of living will bring about the assimilation of the lower classes into the middle and by so doing will make them less violent. But say, from one generation to this will happen over the long run and, besides, even middle- and if it happens at all, the next As for the upwardly mobile and upper-class boys riot sometimes. politically minded Negro who has a potential for outbursts of righteous indignation and for demonstrations, even serious and successful (;2 efforts at reform are likely to leave him more rather than less angry, The faster and farther the Negro rises the more impatient he is likely to be with whatever he thinks prevents his rising still faster and still " remarks: farther, As the HARYOU manual Youth in the Ghetto, The closer the Negro community gets to the attainment of its the closer it gets to the removal of the determinants and goals the more manifestations of racial exploitation and powerlessness "63 impatient individual Negroes will become for total equality, It is not only the Negro who will become more disaffected as his ificasituation improves, The process of " middle- " and " upper- classtion " is making the whole society more sensitive to departures, both , of. how real and imaginary, from the ideal, inherently unrealizable things ought to be, As the economy becomes more productive and

and among them social arrangements more decent , the well-off become more restless and more intolerant of the youth especially continued failure to achieve social perfection,

64 Demonstrations

confrontations , protests, dialogues, and so forth, are bound to be more frequent as the middle and upper classes grow and more and

more people have the leisure to act upon what the J udeo- puritan tradition tells them is a positive obligation to make society over. No doubt most of the blood spilled by the middle and upper classes will be steer s blood carried for the purpose in plastic containers. The effect on the lower classes of this sort of behavior by the upper classes may be incendiary, however.

THE FUTURE OF THE LOWER CLASS

235

armies of policemen, but violent crime and civil disorder will dehowever, the lower class were to disappearIf, if, say, its members were overnight to acquire the attitudes, motivathe most serious and intractions, and habits of the working class

crease very little,

CHAPTER TEN

If the children of the degraded classes could be taken in infancy, before their bad habits have had time to form, and

table problems of the city would all disappear with it. As the last several chapters have contended, the serious problems class of the city all exist in two forms - a normal- class and a lower- its In which are fundamentally different from each other. form , consists normal-class form, the employment problem, for example mainly of young people who are just entering the labor market and

trained to earn a livelihood, a certain proportion of them would be redeemed, If those who could not be so trained were allowed to starve , the number to grow up a burden on society would be diminished. The greatest difficulty in the way of such a policy is to organize charitable effort in such a way that it shall be intelli-

who must make a certain number of trials and errors before finding

suitable jobs; in its lower- class form , it consists of people who prefer the " action " of the street to any steady job, The poverty problem in its normal-class form consists of people (especially the aged, the physi-

gently directed to this end. The natural tendency of such effort is the very opposite of that here pointed out,

cally handicapped, and mothers

The Future of the Lower Class

Simon Newcomb, 1886

Let us take the little child in the future from its possibly ignorant, filthy, careless mother , as soon as it can walk. . . and give it three hours daily in the kindergarten, where during that time it will be made clean, will enjoy light, color, order, music and the sweet influence of a loving and self-controlled voice, - Annie Adams (Mrs, James T. ) Fields, 1886

with dependent children) whose

only need in order to live decently is money; in its lower-

class form even if

it consists of people who would live in squalor and misery their incomes were doubled or tripled, The same is true with the slum housing, schools, crime , rioting; each is other problems really two quite different problems, single The lower-class forms of all problems are at bottom a problem: the existence of an outlook and style of life which is radically present-oriented and which therefore attaches no value to work, sacrifice , self- improvement , or service to family, friends, or community. Despite all that was said to the contrary in the earlier chapters of this book, some readers may suspect that when the author uses the Negro, words " lower class" what he has in the back of his mind is " real" purpose of the rather pessimisThey may suspect , too, that the " tic account of the possibilities of reducing the size of the lower class that follows is to lay the basis for the conclusion that nothing should be done about any of the city s serious problems, There is, of course s meaning, no arguing with a reader who is determined to mistake one class All the author can do is to repeat once more that there are lowerethnic groups, including the Angloall , in pe'ople , as defined here Saxon white Protestant one , and to point to the obvious fact that most Negroes are not improvident , do not live in squalor and violence, and

,"

THE FUTURE OF THE LOWER CLASS

236 / THE UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED therefore are plainly

not

lower class, As for the suspicion that the

argument of this chapter will be used to justify a program of inaction the reader is advised to wait and see, Whether lower- class outlook and style of life will change

or can i

and, if so, under what circumstances and at what be changed rate are questions of great interest to policymakers, As was pointed out when the concept of class culture was introduced (early in

Chapter Three), social scientists differ as to the relative importance of social heredity " and " social machinery " in forming class patternings of attitudes, values , and modes of behavior, As was said before , both sets pf influences are undoubtedly at work and interact in complex

ways; undoubtedly, too, the relative importance of these forces , as well as the nature of their interaction , differs from one group to another and from one individual to another, Whether because (as Walter B, Miller has insisted in a brilliant essay)l they have been caught up in an ideological movement or for some other reason , since the late 1950 S most social scientists have discounted heavily the view that the lower- class person has been permanently damaged by having been assimilated in infancy and early childhood into a pathological culture and instead have come to view the lower- class life style as an adaptation to the realities of poverty,

racial and class discrimination, bad schooling, poor or nonexistent job opportunities , and, in general blocked opportunities, From the standpoint of its theorists , the War on Poverty of the 1960 S represented an effort to eliminate the lower class, (That " poverty " was not to be regarded as solely, or even mainly, a matter of low The Other America income was stressed by Michael Harrington in book which did much to create in the public opinion that made possible the War on Poverty, His " most important analytic point

poverty in America forms a culture , a was that way of life and feeling. "2) few social scientists supposed that raising

Harrington wrote ,

incomes would of itself bring about the desired changes in the life style of " the pOOr. "3 Higher incomes were a necessary but not a

sufficient condition for this. It was crucial to change the " opportunity structure " in many ways: by ending racial discrimination, providing

job training, improving schools ,

housing, and health care , and

237

" to participate in the making of service strategy, " as it neighborhood and community decisions. A "

enabling and encouraging " the poor

, what was of fundamenwas called, would lead to higher incomes, but tal importance, it would change the individual's attitudes and habits, , and thus render cause him to gain self-confidence and self-respect move out of lower- class and into normal

him able and willing to

mainstream ) culture, , the War on Poverty Whatever its achievements in other directions

did not change the style of life of " the

poor,

" The reason for its

failure to do so , many of its proponents have contended, was insufficient funding (this although federal spending for major Great7Society billion programs increased from $ 1.7 billion in fiscal 1963 to $35, hearted support in cruin fiscal 1973)5 together with (at most) halfcial matters, such as citizen participation, on the part of the politicomplaints had

cians and administrators who ran things. If ,these they had none at all some validity as applied to the national scene in certain places where the failure was no less, New Haven, for exam-

ple, embarked upon an elaborate effort to change the life style of

young among them (the young change), as early as 1959; large being thought most amenable to the poor, " especially that of the

the sums were expended ($7, 700 per poor family in the peak year); , enereffort was enthusiastically backed and promoted by a powerful and run getic, and able mayor, and the programs were designed administrators, citizen participation) by talented (albeit without Nevertheless, after eight years a careful scholar concluded that their contribution to any decline in the amount of poverty in New Haven can at best have been marginal and indirect, that stable A variant of the " blocked opportunity " theory asserts mainstream employment is sufficient to bring the lower class to should " be the " wage ways, Providing full- time jobs at a " living a Special Task Force of social scientists first goal of public policy, Work in America, If all men reported to the Secretary of HEW in

could count on such jobs, they said; " and if all women could therefore look forward to marrying men who could serve them in the provider role and for whom they could serve in the homemaker role, then it is likely that fewer girls would become pregnant before marriage , that lower-class couples would marry at a somewhat later age,

'"

"'

238

239

THE FUTURE OF THE LOWER CLASS

THE UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED

that relationships in lower- class marriages would be less tense , that fewer marriages would break up, and for those that did, remarriage would take place more quickly, The " employment strategy, " like the " services " one , assumes that

the tastes of the lower class are not very different from those of the mainstream ; that they want to be " successful" by the standards of the larger society and accordingly will accept real " opportunities " if they are offered. Rainwater is very explicit on this. Lower-class people , he writes, " know what they would like if only they had the resources of the average working class man they would want a quiet , rather ' square ' life in a quiet neighborhood far from the dan-

life itself,

possible policies, vigorously pursued and properly funded

" he writes,

it will take at least a generation for the poor to acquire the kind of experience they need if they are to

sustain themselves through "l0

employment to produce equality of opportunity in our society. including the " disadvantaged poor That most people inducements (" opportunities situational eventually respond to in ways that , although they may not conspicuously affect their own life styles, profoundly affect those of their children or grandchil-

, Gary Becker, and other economists have developed and partially tested theories about In an

dren appears very likely, T, W, Schultz

investment in human capital" that strongly support this idea,

dangers and seductions (if not the insults) of the lower- class world are

interpretative summary of this work, Schultz conjectures, with reference to changes that have taken place in the Western world over the last half-century, that the introduction of various forms of new and

Pondering why welfare workers have not had more success in luring men " away from a life of irresponsibility, sensuality, and I free-wheeling aggression " Alvin Gouldner , a sociologist , concludes I that many men may simply judge that the bargain offered them give up promiscuous sex , give up freely expressed aggression and wild spontaneity, , , and you , or your children , may be admitted to

tions,11 The effect of the new knowledge, he and others think, has s time both absolutely and been to increase the value of people , , and in particular , to put a prerelative to that of physical capital mium on the skill and " quality attributes " of individuals, This premillions of parents to have and is causing mium has caused fewer children both in order that they (the parents) may acquire and

gers, seductions , and insults of the world in which they live. "8 This

may be true of many, especially among women, but for others the

the world of three square meals a day, to a high school or perhaps

even a college education, to the world of charge accounts , of secure jobs and respectability is not a very attractive one. 9 Certainly there is reason to believe that many lower- class men , especially young ones and those profitably engaged in illicit activities , would not be attracted to regular work and thus induced to change fundamentally their style of life - by any inducements that an employer , public or private ,

Even where such differences of values and tastes are not crucial measures implied by the " blocked opportunity " theory encounter an obstacle the seriousness of which is not often fully realized. This is

, and modes of behavior change slowly

slowly, in the case of adults at least ,

use the skills and attributes so much in demand and in order to give

their children better opportunities to acquire them also, The investments people are making to improve their own and their children more learning both in and out quality " take many forms school , greater concern for health and safety, increased geographical and the total amount mobility in response to job opportunities

being invested is unprecedented, , It is plausible to suggest that time

could be expected to offer.

that attitudes , habits

useful knowledge has been the impetus to far-reaching transforma-

much reduce , if not distinction between " social machinery " and " social heredity, " On this the further testimony of Rainwater is of special interest. " Even with the best as to

altogether eliminate , -the practical significance of the

horizons change, although

perhaps not without a considerable lag, in response to changes in the hypothesized, is objective situation, One s time horizon, it may be whichever point in future time is closer to the present: (I) that beyond that is, beyond which one s goals have no which " nothing matters concrete implications for action, or (2) that beyond which one cannot illfluence events in accordance with one s intentions. On this hypothesis , not only the introduction of new knowledge but various other for example, the acceptance of goals that changes in the situation

240

THE FUTURE OF THE LOWER CLASS

THE UNHEA VENL Y CITY REVISITED

24 I

have implications for a more distant future , a reduction of uncertainty! certainly highest of all), Probably the lower-class poor died from want about future possibilities, or an increase in ability to exert political or

more often than did the other poor; certainly they died more often

other influence would extend time horizons thereby (as was sug- from syphilis, excessive drinking, accidents, and homicide, It is probgested in Chapter Three) producing changes in the traits that consti- ably indicative of differences in class culture that , at the turn of the

tute a culture or life style,

century, the life expectancy at age ten of the Irish immigrant was only Even on the most optimistic assumptions as to the inducements thirty-eight years, whereas for the Russian Jew (who did not brawl or offered them and their willingness and ability to respond to them, it is drink and whose religious observances probably had some hygienic

safe to say that lower-class persons will not disappear in the foresee- value), it was a little more than fifty.13 able future, Although a very small part of the population, they are Fifty or more years ago , the Malthusian checks of poverty and vice violent may have been operating so strongly on the lower class of the largest nevertheless numerous enough to generate social problems of great seriousness in the eyes of the society cities as to cause it nearly to die out every generation or two, There is crime, for example and there is at least the possibility that their numbers will increase no " hard" evidence to support this proposition, however. rather than decrease in the future, It is necessary, therefore , to con- Whatever was the case half a century or more ago , the lower class sider further the future of that portion of the lower class - a small may be growing now, Poverty is no longer a major cause of death in which will persist no matter what changes are made the cities, Improvements in public sanitation and in medical and one , perhaps development of in " social machinery, I hospital care for the indigent, together with the class people , keep many lowerantibiotics and other miracle drugs , in spite of themselves, Through the first half of I t is convenient to begin a discussion of the future of the lower class alive , often, as it were by considering its probable rate of natural increase, This is not on the the century, when a plateau was reached, deathrates declined steadily assumption that there is a " lower class gene pool" ; on the contrary (as was explained in Chapter Three), class is here regarded as a cultural not a biological , phenomenon, Since there is a high probability that children born to lower-class parents will be socialized into the culture of the lower class, it is necessary to consider how many such children there are likely to be, No data exist on the deathrate in the lower class as defined here, However, such data as do exist suggest that , in the last century and in the early decades of this one , it may have been high enough nearly to offset the birthrate (which also can only be guessed at), In 1864, Boston s crusading Unitarian minister , Theodore Parker , exclaimed i in horror that three- fifths parents " die

of the children

born there to Catholic

before the sun of their fifth year shines on their luckless

lower- class heads, "12 The infant and child mortality rates among , which means that the sun could Catholics were no doubt even higher have shone on very few lower- class

heads indeed, Although death

took its heaviest toll in infan~ and childhood, adult deathrates among lower- class poor they were the poor were also high (and among the

in all age , color, and occupational groups, The lowest socioeconomic stratum (which although not constituted of the lower class nevertheless included most of it) shared in this general decline but relative to

the rest of the population its deathrate (except for infants) remained at the high turn-of- the-century level.14 The deathrate of the lower class , although probably lower than it

was half a century or more ago, seems likely to remain high in comparison to the deathrates of other classes, Many of the things for example , early and multiple childbirth (the that make it high

deathrate of women who have had five or more children is much higher than that of others), alcohol and drug abuse , accidents, and homicide

are beyond the reach of public action;

further large

reductions in the lower-class deathrate can occur only as the result of

changes in lifestyle , which is to say, from the lower class s ceasing to be lower class.15 Despite its high deathrate , it is nevertheless likely that the lower class is now more than reproducing itself, Its deathrate relative to its birthrate although the latter is probably no longer high has probably fallen too,

THE FUTURE OF THE LOWER CLASS / 243

242 / THE UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED If the lower-

class birthrate falls far enough, the decline in the! is also unmarried; having a baby adds to her economic : e?ucational,

As someone has remarked, It IS probably replenish itself. The appropriation in recent years of large sums fori more important to delay the first child than to prevent the sevent?, public birth-control clinics (the increase in federal subsidies was frOm Birth-control services, however, are likely to have mo:e success III If the moth $ 10 million in fiscal 1967 to $ 165 million in fiscal 1973), the Ameri- preventing the seventh than in delaying the first or even the second or third, The problem here can Medical Association s recommendation to its members in 197 I' remains unmarried that they give contraceptive advice to unmarried girls without (if the! not mainly that teen-age girls lack either knowledge about contracepgirl insists) consulting her parents , and the Supreme Court decision of! tion or access to contraceptives (although of course many do, espe1973 legalizing abortion during the first three months of pregnancy! cially among the youngest); nor is it mainly that they are psychologiwill all have some tendency to reduce unwanted births in the lowest! cally incapable of providing for the future (although doubtless man socioeconomic group, Whether their effect will be dramatic is open to are); rather it is that the episodic nature of sex among teen-agers question, however. In 1965 there were marked educational and racial incompatible with planning, " Family planning, " John P. Kantner and differences in the use of the most effective technique (the pill) but Melvin Zenick remark in their elaborate study of the use of contrasignificantly that high ceptives by young unmarried women, " assumes both a family context these had disappeared by 1970 , except I6 For several years and the possibility of rational planning, When , howe ver" sexual school dropouts continued to make less use of it, known about effec- . -encounters are episodic and, perhaps, unanticipated, passion IS apt to most women having unwanted pregnancies have tive techniques (the pill and the I.u.O, ) even if they did not use them triumph over reason, "20 or did not do so regularly or, perhaps, competently, Philips Cutright, a demographer , estimates that, using current~y If there is reason to doubt that these developments will much affect available methods, a birth-control program is likely to reduce rlthe birthrate of the lowest socioeconomic group, there is even more licit pregnancies among low- income women by only 10 to 20 percent, that is, " Contraception-only programs, " he writes, " have not yet demonreason to doubt that they will affect that of the lower class of the women who cannot or will not plan ahead, who regards preg- strated their capacity to prevent a significant number of unwanted nancy (and everything else) as something that " happens to " one if illicit pregnancies in any large population, "21 Abortion on request , he one is " unlucky, " who is not much troubled at the prospect of having thinks, might cut the illegitimacy rate by 30 to 50 percent III less than a baby whose life chances will be poor , who may be incapable of a decade. To many, of course , the evil of this will appear equal to, or following simple directions (" take a blue pill each day until they are greater than, that of illegitimacy, The most effective ~nd least objecall gone and then take the red ones ), and who in all likelihood must tionable " solution " to the problem would seem to- be III the developadapt herself to the demands of a man who, if he has any interest in ment of a " morning after " oral contraceptive , but this does not appear the matter at all , wants to claim " credit" by getting her pregnant to be imminent. (without , of course , assuming responsibility for her or the child afterward).J7 Such a woman , it is safe to say, will make little use of birthIt is reasonable to suppose, that no matter how successful improvecontrol clinics and, when she does use them , will often end up preg- ment of opportunity proves to be as a general method of dealing with nant anyway. present-oriented ness, there will be some persons, if only a few, whose A particularly intractable and serious problem (although not one present-orientedness will remain almost unaffected, Also, even if limited to the lower clas~, is presented by young girls who have provision of good opportunities were sure to eliminate all present-

deathrate may be offset ,

so that the lower class will again fail to and other disadvantages, I9

illegitimate babies, The risk of mortality or of

serious physical or

mental impairment is high when a mother is very young, , and, when she

orientedness within two or three

generations, there would be good

reason to look for ways by which this outcome might be secured more

245

THE FUTURE OF THE LOWER CLASS 244

THE UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED

quickly, Without prejudice to the idea that making it in some sense i

meaning is never abstract or complicated. He calls attention to feal tures of the situation that his listener will perceive and evaluate as he profitable for people to Lake account of the future is in general a elaborated" as necessar ~ and possibly a sufficient condition of getting them to do so does, The middle and upper classes, by contrast, use " the remaInder of this chapter will discuss the uses and limitations of well as restricted codes. Communication by means of an elaborated code employs more varied and complicated syntactic elements; the than conventionalized, the! message is relatively individualized rather Psychotherapy holds almost no promise as a means of changing ,:"er .class, It possesses no techniques for changing personality; even l explicit rather than implicit, and abstract rather than concrete. Bernperhaps insuperable ones - in ' stein illustrates these codes with two imaginary conversations, each If It dId, there would be obstacles the way ?f wholesale application of them to the lower class, 22 One between a mother and a child who sits on her lap in a bus. problem IS that the nature of lower-class culture makes its bearers bad MOTHER: 0 on tlg t. su ~ec s, ower-c ass people , wrIte Hollin shead and Redlich CHILD: W y. MOTHER: Hold on tight. are not able to understand . how thinking and talking can help them. They

some quite different approaches,

23

have not learned . to verbalIze and symbolize in the same way higher pers ons . have. Neither have they learned to sublimate present needs for realIzatIOn of future goals.

In any case ,

class the

there are not nearly enough therapists to treat the insane let alone the present-oriented, Two different lines of experiment and analysis in the field of child development are of special interest, Adherents of neither approach expect to be able to derive a formula for turning present-oriented children into future-oriented adults , but both approaches have clear implications, albeit perhaps mainly negative ones , for policy, Language and class culture, In the last half-century, philosophers anthropologists , and psychologists have all become increasingly interested in the way language shapes thoughts and feelings. A psychologist at the University of London , Basil Bernstein , has taken the lead in

applying this line of analysis to problems of child development.24 His thesis is that linguistic codes (" fashions of speaking ) are shaped by social structure (by the nature of family, work , and community groups, for example) and in turn shape class culture. The lower classes (that is, semiskilled and unskilled), for example , are oriented toward the communal rather than the individual , toward the concrete rather than the abstract , and toward the here and now rather than the future, Linguistic code..,s, thus set certain limits on what a child learns and on how it will learn it. The lower classes use only a " restricted" code , which is a language of largely implicit meanings; the speaker relies heavily upon gestures, intonation , and other nonverbal cues; his

CHILD: Wh

MOTHER: You II fall. CHILD: Why? , didn t I? MOTHER: I told you to hold on tight MOTHER: CHILD: MOTHER: CHILD: MOTHER: CHILD: MOTHER:

Hold on tightly, darling. Why?

If you don t you will be thrown forward and then you Why?

Because if the bus suddenly stops you seat in front. Why?

Now hold on tightly, darling, and don

The low level of conceptualization

ll fall.

ll jerk forward onto the t make such a fuss.

in the lower-

class mother s basic

influences, Bernstein thinks, the child' model of thinking and feeling as well as his desire and ability to learn,

communication code

This low level of conceptualization constrains, among other things, the intensity and extent of his curiosity, his attitude tpward authority (as opposed to power), and his ability to identify with the aims and

principles of a society (as opposed to a local group),

to verbalize

feelings and to express them in socially approved ways, and to take an future-oriented) attitude toward instrumental (which is to say a people and things,

, although not

It seems likely that linguistic limitations are a cause necessarily the only one, of present-orientedness, Without, much language less one could not hope one could have no sense of a future

~"

246

,"

THE UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED

THE FUTURE OF THE LOWER CLASS

247

28

plan, 26 The more limited one s linguistic (and , therefore , conceptual! The lower- class child does not get from its mother or from anyone ~ that ~uipment , it seems reasonable to suggest , the less able one will bt else the support and stimulation that it needs, This is not to sa , as RamwaeIther to , take account of the future or to control impulsesP There . lower- class mothers do not love their children, It may ~e fulfillment in motherhood III a way that much evIdence to support this view, ter asserts, that they find Another line of theoryl middleRelatio ~ to a mother-figure in childhood, class mothers, who are taught the value of 32 outside for The interests lower- class and experIment that appears to be particularly relevant in this context! establishing their validity as persons, do not, t mother or mother substitute is not, however, " a star to steer by, " An stresses the importance for normal personality development of a close and satisfying relation in the early years of life with a mother or account of the nature and significance of her failure to be one has been

mother substitute, The infant and young child, Bruno Bettelheil11 given by Lois Barclay Murphy, a psychologist who observed the

writes must have a star to steer by, "29 Erik H, Erikson explains thai behavior in a day-care center of " extremely deprived" children from 33 These children lik ~d the feel regular and mutual affirmation and certification " between the " disorganized" black neighborhoods, ~ys or Infant and one who cares for it will in later life reassert itself in strong of sand and water, as the others did , but they did not organIze t not emotional ties to others- family, friends , and political leaders, Fail. solve balance , weight, and space problems with blocks, They dld ure to form such bonds " can harm an infant radically, by diminishing come to the center with the idea of building a garage or fire statIon, or extinguishing hi ~ searc h for impressions, (T) hey may play at eating or getting whipped or ot~er happenings General~y spe ~kmg, mlddle- and upper- class children get the sup- but they do not project sequences which involve makIng a plan and port and stimulatIOn that t~ey need, They tend to have mothers (in the carrying it out. upper class, mother substItutes) who are supportive and who also A child' s ability to make a plan and carry It out , Dr. Murphy ?ave the verbal skil ls necessary to stimulate linguistic development. It believes, may dep ~nd largely upon its mother s response to its earliest IS noteworth ~ that m one of the, most upwardly mobile and presuma- . efforts at play, The infant s first perception of self may res.ult from ~tes , ~ future -on ented of all ethnIc groups, the Jewish , the pattern of play, probably with the mother s nipple, The mother contnb ~, strok ~ng ItS child-rearIng I ? the last generation emphasized both of these elements this perception by fingering the infant's fingers and toe to ~n extraordIlla~y de~ree, The Jewish mother , ~s described by Zena. legs, and patting its back, When it pats and push es her, It expenenc and when It SmIth Blau, was III thIS respect the exact OpposIte of the lower- class. for the first time the impact of its self on the envIronment , such as a rattle, it is with an object do something ~egro mother , as described earlier. The Jewish mother held her son learns that it can ~ew mont?s, when ~, After its first m bon~s of love and mut~al dep en~ence , beyon~ his childhood and encouraged to try new exploration even hIS youth , all the whIle subjectIng hIm to Intense and constant the mother rocks and bounces it , It forms the notIon that It can do the mother to pla~ with it. Th is is a begi~ning at cause things that will that IS, of plannIng, conceiving of positive sequences of actIon Whatever Ylddlshe Mamehs dId for their chIldren, , , was accompanied' h something happen will not be to " make T e m an s Impu se by a flow of language , consisting of rich , colorful , expressive words and ed bv the ex erience that IS rem orc , except as It phrases, Their vocabulary of endearments alone can fill a modest-sized expressed, however d", horne severe~y deprIve paperback, but they also had a su erb store of admonishments curses something actually does happen, In the " ji dl IS mInIma, ven ee n and cleanIng are Imprecations, explanations, songs, and folk-sayings that they effortlessly Dr, Murphy says, mterp ay all of ~hlCh

"3o "

verbal stimulation,

'f

31

,f

IE

invoked as they went about ministering to the needs of their children and done their husbands, The ..freedom that they exhibited with the

t"

playf.ul- ,

in a random fashion and are rarely , m the spoken word m~kes it hardly worthwhile for the poverty chIld to Invest

the invited a similar response from their children and it carried over into environment. " The mother who sits passively, merely holdIng , explorschool. , , , baby, does not create in it the expectation that reaching out

THE FUTURE OF THE LOWER CLASS 248

249

THE UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED

twe~ve children

ing, and trying t~, make contact with the environment will produc~ interested in him or her. The contrast group inclu~ed havmg a higher ~ean ~as ~t results, Thus the extremely deprived baby remains at al who were much like the others except for pnmltl ~e level ~f d ~velopment , exploiting sensory experiences and IQ - 86, 7 as compared to 64, 3. The children in this ~oup remamed Immedl ate gratificatIOn over and over again. " In order to become in the orphanage , where they continued to get the kmd of care that goal-orIented, Dr. Murphy concludes , a child evidently needs the both they and the others had been getting before the study began, . found that the experimental group had early experiences of efforts rewarded, The deprived child , when he After only two years, it was ;eas the other group had made e~ually striking gains in IQ, whe ~as reached th ~ age o ~ three or !our knows his way around" and made with the 5, manages for himself, He remams, however, " at the primitive sen- striking losses, The mean IQ s were now 91.8 and 60, With one exception the members of experimental group in the lead. sory ~r motor lev ~l

of playing with water and sand, without goals, or

the experimental group were then placed in adoptive homes, After runmng around without a purpose, 8 to half years their mean IQ had risen from 9 1, . Whether early environmental influences, such as lack of stimula- another two and onethe same period, that of the contrast group had risen also, permanent effects on the individual is a dis- 10 I -4; in tlOn , necess~rily have but very slightly, from 60, 5 to 66, I. puted questIOn, Most American psychologists agree that such effects Twenty years later a follow-up study was made, All those in the are profound to begin with and that they extend at least into adolesexperimental group were found to be self-supporting, and their avercence, However : one influential figure , Jerome Kagan of Harvard ational achievement compared , favorably age education and occup ~eheves that this ,;iew which ~o r many years he regarded as a , lar ~e, Eleven of the thirteen had unshakable truth , req~lres revislOn, 34 In a Guatemalan village , he with that of the populatIOn at members of observed that although mfants were rarely spoken to or played with married, and the mean IQ ofthelr children was 104. The hadmarrIed. die~ in and young children were moderately to severely retarded, preadoles- the contrast group had not fared nearly so well, One two had four were still in institutions, ~nly . Environmental experiences exert adolescence and cents we , re ~arkably competent. " in institutions had low- paymgjobs, a non- trIvIal mfluence on intellectual development " he concluded, Those who were not conditional to give " But , that" influen ~e seems to be more temporary than many have ' A study which finds that the ability of an adult class pers ~n p~~bab~y surml~ed" The mmd , he now thinks , must have inherent properties love " (something, it will be seen, that a lowercrItical m enablI ~g It to construct new ideas and objects - a " prior schematic cannot do) to a boy before he reaches early adolescence ISS, Departlater life style was done in 1970 for the D, luepnnt" or " plan for growth" that unfolds when circumstances are determining his36 L. Ross compared ment of Labor, Edward M, Glaser and Harvey made it" (were " successtwo who had " thirtybut probably not all- of the damage done two groups of men T?e view that much unsuccessful" ), All were " a chIld by early under stimulation may be undone later under favora- ful" ) and thirty-eight who had not~d(were thirty, all, w ~~e blac ~, or Mexible ci ~cumstances is dramatically supported by a much-cited study between the ages of twenty-one a ghetto, all came done, m Iowa over a long term of years, Two groups of children all can- American and had grown up m a large city nsldered mentally retarded at the outset , were followed for about from families that had been on welfare or lived in public housing, and not had enough to thirty years. 35 The experimental group, consisting of thirteen children all remembered times in childhood when they had ~tely clothed, Those who had " made it': had worked eat or been adequ un?er the ag~ of t ree , was ta~en from an orphanage in which the receIVed welfare chIldren receIVed depersonalIzed and affection1ess but otherwise more or less steadily for the past two years, had not adequate " care and was placed in an institution for the retarded. did not need job training, and had not been in trouble with the law. There the attendants and older girl inmates treated the children as The " unsuccessful" had been unemployed or underemployed for the need job training assistance, did past two years and

rIght, guests, and each child found some

one girl who was particularly

250 / THE UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED

The men were asked to talk at length about themselves, their lives

and especially, their recollections of childhood, It was evident that the mainstream subculture characterized by successes " belonged to a a work and achievement ethic, close family ties and loyalty, avoidance of trouble with the law , stability on the job, taking responsibility for one s own destiny, orderly planning for long-range goals, ability to ~ sustain activity in goal- directed behavior , and ability to make a I

THE FUTURE OF THE LOWER CLASS / 251

because these

It was and had low expectations for their children, mainstream"

subculture

families failed to assimilate the child into "

the subculture of the streets, that he chose the only alternative condiThe effective parent, Glaser and Ross decided, employed " and unconditionallove, " as opposed to rejection on the one handmisbehaved, In tionallove on the other, to discipline a boy when he black families either parent might do this, although more often than Americans the

not it was the mother who did, Among Mexicanstreet life or gang situation was entirely different; that culture requires a mother to give accept life subculture characterized by an ethic of toughness , shrewdness unconditional love to her children and it permits a male to hustling, violence , emphasis on having a reputation among one s , reproof only from another male, (Thus a boy who stole his widowed peers , less concern with family ties than with ties to peers, glorifica- l mother s welfare check in order to buy heroin was not dealt firmly tion of antisocial acts (in the " mainstream " sense), absence of long- r with by her: it was a matter for his older brother.) In some instances, served - a school coach, for example range planning or goal-seeking, a disposition in favor of immediate adults outside the family maingratification, and a rejection of most " mainstream " values, the function of an effective parent in bringing a boy into the " , preventing him from Given that they had all come from similarly disadvantaged backstream " subculture or, to be more precise grounds , what accounted for the very different styles of life? Not turning to the street for what he could not get at home, intelligence; a simple " culture- free " test (the SRA nonverbal) failed It would seem that, even on the most optimistic view, the individual to distinguish between members of the two groups, From the men will not develop his full intellectual and emotional capacities except class) accounts of their early lives, it appeared that the choice of a subculas, sooner or later, he comes under normal (as opposed to lower- if he tural " track" had been made (or at any rate was exhibited in behavior) influences, Apparently he will suffer some permanent damage in early adolescence, Those who had " made it" remembered liking passes his first two or three years in an extremely deprived environdisadvantage may be school and participating in school activities; in adolescence their ment , but much, perhaps most, of his initial stimulation adolescence he gets support and self-esteem was already related to notions of achievement, On the overcome if by early , the " plan of other hand, those who had not " made it" had not liked school (many from peers, teachers , or fellow workers, Without this had dropped out), and they had maintained self-esteem by 'having growth" inherent in his mind (assuming there to be one) will unfold it will successful reputations on the street, Once on one subcultural " track, little if at all, and by the time he has reached adulthood a boy became increasingly alienated from the other , which rejected presumably have become incapable of unfolding, Insofar as the influhim as he did it. As the boys grew into adulthood , the " tracks ence of his early retardation is still making itself,felt he then reaches for when he may do. became diverging life paths, adolescence, his situation is extremely perilous the street for example , assimilate the subculture of " Probing into what the men recalled of their childhoods, Glaser and something Ross concluded that what accounted for the adolescent's movement take up an unskilled, deadend occupation, or (in the case of a girl) have the effect of which will be to lock him (or her) into one or another subculture was the presence or absence of an an unwanted baby effective parent, Those who had " made it" told of having at least one into a position from which escape is not practical even if it be psychostrong parent who had high expectations for him and was effective in logically possible. setting controls on his behavior, The " unsuccessful" men came from The implication of all this may seem to be that the child should be families which had presented no c1ear standards, made few demands, taken from its lower-class parents at a very early age and brought up

somewhat harmonious adjustment to the existing larger social order,

The " non-successes

" by contrast ,

belonged to a

252

THE UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED

THE FUTURE OF THE LOWER CLASS

253

social problem " of some sort , it by people whose culture is normal. It will do little good to explain to a lower class would turn out to be a " lower- class mother wherein her child-rearing practices are wrong: she r would not automatically follow that society has a right to interfere so is not really interested in improving her practices , perhaps because drastically in people s lives, If failure to provide a child with adequate she cannot see anything wrong with them, In this and in other areas as , linguistic equipment is considered sufficient grounds for removing a well , her class culture sets sharp limits on what it is possible for her to child from its parents, so in consistency ought failure to provide it would probably find do, It may seem, therefore , that the only thing to do is to take the child with " a star to steer by, " This latter criterion from her and put it in the care of a substitute who will bring it up almost as much application in the upper classes as in the lower. As a practical matter there is, of course , not the slightest possibility of a However , the case is not as clear as it may at first appear. It is not rule being adopted that might be applied to the rich as well as to the certain that taking the child from its mother may not cause even poor; this appears from the practice of the courts at the present time, greater injury to it than would leaving it with her. (It should be Neglect" and " abuse, " the grounds for child removal in the law of remembered that the towa children whose IQ improved so remarkmost states, are everywhere interpreted narrowly to mean abandonably were transferred from an institution, After a comprehensive ment of the child, failing to supply it with food , clothing, shelter, and , beating it or review of the scientific literature , psychologist Leon J, Yarrow conmedical care, grossly mistreating it (as, for example cludes that keeping a child with " grossly inadequate parents in a locking it in a closet for a long time), or outrageously endangering its depriving and hostile environment " does not seem warranted by what moral welfare (as, for example, by carrying on the trade of prostituis known of the dangers in separating a child from its mother; he tion in its presence.yJ9 " Emotional neglect seems the most obvious stresses, however , that before a child is removed , strong efforts should type to social workers, " one of them wJ;ites, " but it is the most obscure "~o The inability of psychiatrists to be made to improve family conditionsY to the courts in our experience, Presumably, the danger to the child in taking it from its mother is a specify precisely what " emotional neglect" consists of is one reason function not only of the mother s incompetence but also of the ability why the courts do not take note of it.41 One suspects, however, that of the mother-substitute to give it the support and stimulation that it the condition were found only among the poor, it would prove no needs, Even supposing (as it seems plausible to do) that at present the more difficult to define for legal purposes than, say, loitering, average substitute provides a much better environment for the child In fact, even laws with respect to gross physical neglect and abuse than does the average mother from whom children are taken, one still are not enforced stringently or uniformly. Most cases of neglect and cannot conclude that all lower- class children should be taken from abuse never come to the attention of the authorities, Neighbors are their mothers, For as the number of such removals increased , the reluctant to " interfere " teachers rarely report it when a pupil comes quality of the average substitute would surely fall and that of the to school with cuts and bruises, and physicians frequently either fail to average mother would probably increase, It is one thing to provide recognize the " child abuse syndrome " or decline to take the risk of proper adoptive homes and institutions for a few thousand children a being sued for damages if the parents are acquitted, Even whenmay a case be year and an altogether different one to provide them for sever~l is reported and the facts are beyond dispute , the court hundred thousand, With respect to institutions, at least , it is likely that unwilling to take custody of the child, probdepersonalized and affectionless but otherwise adequate " care is the As a matter of logic, the simplest way to deal with the best that can be expected on a large scale, and one which would not involve any infringement of parents lem Finally, it is questionable whether the state has a right to take a would be to permit the sale of infants and children to rights 4:J child from its parents in ordeito prevent an injury as impalpable and qualified bidders both private and public, (Public bidding might be contingent as its socialization into lower- class culture, :J8 Even if it needed to ensure a price high enough to induce a sufficient number of were certain (and of course it is not) that a child brought up in the lower- class parents to sell their children, ) This assumes, of course

properly,

254

THE UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED

both that a parent who would sell a child would probably abuse or neglect it , and also that one who would buy it (especially if the price were high) would want it enough to take good care of it. The trouble

with the idea , of course , is that it is wrong to represent human beings as commodities to be bought and sold, Another possibility would be to offer " scholarships " to lower- class infants in amounts sufficient to induce their parents to place them in approved boarding schools on a year-round basis. These schools could be located in or near the children s neighborhoods and could be staffed by working-class women and girls from those neighborhoods, These arrangements would enable parents to see their children with-

out having any responsibility for their care, This , of course , is the kibbutzim in Israel. The teaching of the children

basic principle of

could not be done entirely on a classroom basis, however. In the early stages of the acquisition of a new subject matter like reading or arithmetic, a tutorial arrangement (which is what the middle- class child gets from his parents at home) may be necessary; in effect, substitute mothers would have to be provided at least part of the time, If it is not feasible to establish boarding schools, day nurseries may be the next best thing, They are , however , a poor substitute, Even

under the best of circumstances, they are not likely to succeed in bringing children out of lower-class culture, In an experimental project in Boston, twenty-one children, aged two and one- half to six , from disorganized , lower- class families spent two to three mornings a week

in a nursery school generously staffed with highly trained personnel. The school was intended to help the child " gain a sense of mastery over his immediate surroundings, Trips were followed up with related stories and play activities and we usually saw to it that there was something to carry home. By encouraging the children to tell details about these trips to parents (standing by to make sure they would be listened to and adding facts of interest specifically for

the parents), we assisted communication between parents and child and gave emphasis to the importance of the experience for the child.

After attendance of from ene to three years , there was noticeable improvement in the children s appearance , body use , and self-esteem and many had " learned to express their thoughts , feelings , and experi-

THE FUTURE OF THE LOWER CLASS

255

" These gains cerences with accuracy sufficient for communication, tainly justified all the effort that was put forth, but the lives of the children did not change drastically. Language problems, for example continued to hamper the children

s ability to learn even after three

years, and the experimenters doubted that these problems would ever be overcome, Reports that filtered back to them after the experiment had ended were not at all encouraging, Many of the children were placed in situations where more demands were made on them than they were mature enough to fulfill, At least five of them repeated one of the early grades. one another, the It is our impression that as failures began to follow , frightened, passive inevitable regression to more discouraged, impatient behavior occurred.

Lower-class children could probably benefit a great deal more than they do from day nurseries were it not for the fact that they are at once confused and stultified by what they are (and are not) conditions exposed tofor at home, When the influence of the nurserystyle has feasible made , even small changing the child' s outlook and life , it is on improvements in home life might have large effects, As a rule

the mother, or mother-substitute, that efforts to improve the home environment should concentrate, She is best able to give the child the support and stimulation it needs, and, fortunately, she is, likely to be and violent , irresponsible perhaps much less - improvident less , it is the male , espethan her mate, As was noted in Chapter Three

cially the young one , to whom lower-class culture comes most perhaps because extreme presentnaturally, " For some reason orientedness is incompatible with the childbearing function, perhaps to be very because lower- class sex is sometimes too much like"rape toughness (one of Walter enjoyable to women, or perhaps because " class culture) is usually . regarded as a male B, Miller s foci of lowerattribute - women born and brought up in the lower class very often behave in ways that are not characteristic of that class, The loweris often very much concerned but not the father class mother

about the children s welfare: she may try to keep them in school and out of trouble; sometimes she struggles to buy a house, Usually, her efforts are futile, Her mate and, as soon as they" project are old and enough, her at worst family sons are at best noncontributors to any "

" "

257 256

THE UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED

manages to save anything, they soon lay hands on it and squander it. "Getting ahead" is her idea , not theirs, :

active opponents, If she

I t would seem, then , that the aim of policy should be to encourage

s aspirations and to strengthen her hand as much as possible, 47 This is easier said than done , however. One suggested I innovation is the " peace bond, " an arrangement by which a man: incurs an agreed-upon penalty, usually the forfeiture of a small sum , if I he does what he has agreed not to do, It is unlikely that the lower- class

the mother

male will be deterred by such a penalty, or even perhaps by the prospect of jail. Another proposal is that police powers be redefined to allow arrests for misdemeanors on probable cause (in most states a police officer who did not see a misdemeanor committed cannot make an arrest without a signed complaint), This suggestion is open to several objections, One is that such a redefinition of police powers might lead to greater embarrassment and inconvenience for those persons who (because of color , low income , or whatever) are taken to be lower class when in fact they are not, Moreover , the lower- class woman may be just as unwilling to offer the police a verbal complaint as she is to offer them a signed one, There is still another reason why workable ways of protecting the woman from her mate are unlikely to

be found: the lower- class

woman will often tolerate considerable abuse rather than lose the companionship of a man. Rather than risk being abandoned ,

she may

deny that she and her children were

beaten, that the welfare money was spent on a drunken spree , and all the rest. (In Illinois, the police

can

arrest for probable cause on many

misdemeanors but they almost never do, partly for these reasons partly because they do not want to create additional frictions within families , and partly because they want to avoid assaults by angry mates, 48) Against her own unwisdom (if this is what it really is) the police , the courts, and the whole power of government cannot protect her. And so it appears that it will be very difficult if not impossible to realize even the minimum goal of policy namely, to protect the lower- class woman and her children against the violence of her mate. The conclusion is unavoidable that for at least several decades

there will be a lower

class which , while small both in absolute

numbers and as a percentage -;;f the whole population , will nevertheless be large enough to constitute a serious problem - or , rather , a

THE FUTURE OF THE LOWER CLASS

in the city, The question arises, therefore, set of serious problems as to what policies might minimize the difficulties that must inevitably exist when a lower- class minority lives in the midst of an increasingly middle- and upper-class society, small cities like

When the lower class lived on farms and in

Elmtown (the population of which, it will be recalled, was about 25 percent lower class), its members were to some extent both held in check and protected by being physically isolated from money, each other. and

Also, there were few, if any,

opportunities for easy

without money the lower-class person was effectively tied down, An

even greater constraint on him, perhaps, was his visibility, In the slums of a big city, it is easy to drop out of sight. In a town or small city, on the other hand, there is no place to hide. The individual is

known personally by the landlord, corner merchant, and policeman; he cannot escape into anonymity, In the big city he need never see the same merchant, landlord, or policeman twice, Asstyle an economist might class of life has the put it , one who wants to lead a lower- " in the big city, economics of scale advantage of numerous " Therefore , from the standpoint of a society that wants at once to to protect itself from protect lower- class people from each other and class people live in the them, there are advantages in having lower-

town or small city, or, if they must live in the large one, in having critical them scattered in a way such that they will not constitute a " that government promass" anywhere, These considerations suggest example) that tend to push grams (subsidies to large farmers, for of rural areas ought to be unskilled people off the land and out

stopped, that welfare programs should aimthe at making life poor in towns chronically than

and small cities much more advantageous to. it is now (thereby reducing one of their incentives to come to the city), , there should be an end to that kind of and that , within the large cities urban renewal (almost the only kind in fact) the tendency of which is

simply to shift the lower class from one place to another and not to dissipate it. As Wolfgang and Ferracuti remark with reference to the Housing projects and neighborhood areas subculture of violence should be small microcosms of the social hierarchy and value system of the central dominant culture, "49 It is in homogeneity that the subculture has strength and durability,

g" "

258

THE UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED

I t might be argued that the hardest cases among the lower class ought to be treated as semicompetent (incompetents being those for example , children, the insane , the feeble-minded - who are

incapable of knowing where their own interest , not to mention the social interest , lies), Such persons could be cared for in what may be called semi- institutions small enclaves of lower- class people who , either because they wanted help in " staying out of trouble " or because they desired certain material benefits (extra- generous allowances for housing, food, clothing, and health care) would agree

to accept certain limitations on their freedom, For example , they might agree to receive most of their income in kind rather than in cash, to forgo ownership of automobiles , to have no more than two

, and to accept a certain amount of surveillance and supervision from a semi-social-worker-semi- policeman,

or three children

Several considerations, however, argue against semi- institutional

care for the lower class, As a practical matter , it is unlikely that many of the hardest cases those from whom society most needs protection would choose semi-affluence in a semi- institution in preference to the life of the slum, If these hardest cases are to be controlled at all, they must be controlled totally that is , put into prison, This approach is obviously out of the question, since " being lower class " is not a crime or committable condition and is not at all likely to be made one, The tendency, in fact , is in the opposite direction: to confine fewer and fewer of those who have been convicted of crimes or have been judged mentally incompetent.

A very important danger in such efforts to restrain the lower class not lower class, thus abridging the freedom of these others without justification, This danger exists in part because euphemisms - e, the poor have collapsed necessary distinctions between the competent and the semicompetent. (The blind , for example , are often lumped together in is that they might be applied also to people who are

welfare programs with the lower- class poor.~O) It exists also because

prejudice or convenience sometimes causes caretakers to treat externals skin color , speech ways , and so forth as indicators of lower- class culture, Another objection arises from the fact that at the present time (fifty or more years ago it was otherwise) most lower- class people in the

THE FUTURE OF THE LOWER CLASS

259

large cities are black, Putting them in semi- institutions would inevitably appear to be a reflection of racial inferiority or an expression of racial prejudice, What is even more important , perhaps, is that taking the lower- class black out of the slum of the great city would tend to cut him off psychologically from the black community, It is by no means inconceivable that the " black pride " movement may engender morale that the lower class may morale in the mass of black people in some degree share if it is in close physical contact with the main

body of blacks, To be sure , one could argue this the other

way,

contending, first, that nothing would do more for the morale of the black community than to have the worst of the lower class removed from its midst and, second, that lower- class people are by the nature of their culture immune to any moral influence from the surrounding society,

Finally, there is clearly a tension if not an out-and-out incompatibility between the goal of restraining the lower- class individual and that of stimulating him, The first calls for reducing his freedom, the second for enlarging it. If it were possible to identify persons who are under irremediably lower class and to place them and them alone restraints, this objection would not apply. In fact , there is no way of knowing which individuals would respond significantly to incen-

tives and which would not. The danger of perpetuating and increasthe ing present-orientedness while endeavoring to restrain it makes whole enterprise of restraint suspect. Despite the high costs to society and to the lower- class individual himself that follow from increasing his freedom, doing so may well be the best course of action in the long run,

WHAT CAN BE DONE? / 26r

whether a particular measure is either feasible or acceptable, One can rarely be sure that the knowledge needed to make the measure " work" is at hand or within reach; its constitutionality may be in doubt; and there is always some possibility that unanticipated consequences will make its cost prohibitively high, (" Cost" in this context means any undesired effect or forgone advantage , not just an outlay of money or material resources, ) These practical difficulties do not affect the

CHAPTER ELEVEN

What Can Be

Done?

validity of the distinction , however , or destroy

Often travelers , technical advisers or " old hands " from a given country return with tales of how,disorganized dishonest or untrustworthy the people are; but once the tales, have been told , everyone settles down to a theoretical description of, or plan for , the economy of that country which does not take into account in any formal way the Psychological characteristics of the people just described,

its usefulness for

purposes of analysis. This chapter tries to show , first , that the range of feasible measures for dealing with the serious problems of the cities is much narrower than one might think, and , second, that within this range hardly any of the feasible measures are acceptable, If what is feasible is not , in general , acceptable , the reverse is also true: what is acceptable is not , in general , feasible. Moreover , government seems to have a

David McClelJand

if the analysis in the are the very opposite of those preceding chapters is not far wrong that one would recommend, The reasons for this perversity are to be found in the nature of American political institutions and, especially, perverse tendency to adopt measures which

T will be convenient to approach the question that forms the title of

this chapter by distinguishing the feasible from the acceptable, A measure is

if (and only if)

government , state , or national) could constitutionally implement it and if (local its implementation would result in the achievement of some specified goal or level of feasible

output at a cost that is not obviously prohibitive, For example , not feasible for every city dweller to have a

it is

one-acre lot (physical reality prevents), for every child to get a high school education as distinguished from a high school diploma (social and perhaps even

biological reality prevent), to prohibit the movement of the poor from one city to another (this would be unconstitutional), or to replace the present cities with new ones in the space of a few years (the cost would be wildly out vf relation to the benefits), The acceptability of a

measure does not depend upon its feasibility: a measure is

acceptable government (elected or appointed officials or sometimes voters) are willing to try to carry it into effect. Thus, a measure could be entirely feasible but quite unacceptable or entirely acceptable and quite infeasible,

if those who have authority

It goes

without

in

saying that it is often impossible to know in advance

in the influence on public opinion of the upper-class service " and " responsibility to the community,

cultural ideal

of "

Clearly, a measure is infeasible if aimed at the simultaneous attainment of mutually exclusive ends, Two persons cannot both be satisfied constituted of the other s nonsatisfaction, Insoif one s satisfaction is far as the poverty problem , for example , has this relational character (that is, insofar as it is one of " relative deprivation ), it is insoluble, In Hollywood, Leo C, Rosten writes it is natural for the actress who earns $20, 000 a year to envy the actress who earns $50 000 who envies the actress making $ 100 000, In a community where one can make $350, 000 a year , $75, 000 a year is not especially either to the group or the self, "! The same problem impressive arises , of course , even in the least glamorous places and with people of very ordinary income, That objective differences in income can be reduced to almost nothing does not necessarily mean that the problem of relative deprivation can be solved , for the smaller objective difference in income may come to have a greater subjective importance,

262 / THE UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED

WHAT CAN BE DONE ) / 263

The same problem arises with the distribution of things other than income. It is in the nature of deference , for example , that

some

persons receive more than others, There is really no way to prevent those who receive relatively little from perceiving that fact and being made unhappy or suffering a loss of self-respect because of it. As Frank H, Knight has written, " The real scarcity which seriously a~fli~ts ,individualistic civili zation is the scarci ~y of such things as I dlstlOctlOn , spectacular achievements , honor , victory, and power. Since there can never be enough of these things to go around , the problem of poverty with respect to them is logically insoluble, There are many other major problems which , although they differ from this one in (presumably) not having a logical structure that makes them inherently insolvable , are nevertheless unsolved and

, for all anyone knows, may remain so, Although an economist of the first

rank , Kenneth J, Arrow , has recently said that he thinks it " most likely that the reconciliation of full employment and price stability can be significantly improved in the future " the problem appears to be one that cannot be eliminated. :! A problem of even greater magni-

all children acquire the attitudes and skills without which they cannot

live on mutually acceptable terms with society later on, Albert K,

quent Boys: The Culture of the Gang, which have gone unanswered:

Delin-

posed a series of questions

Of these various circumstances and features of our social system which are

involved in the production of the delinquent subculture , which are subject to deliberate control? From the purely technical standpoint , exactly how is it possible to manipulate them in accordance with our wishes? How , for example, can we enable the working- class male to compete more effectively for status in a largely middle- class world, , , ? What price are we willing to pay for this or that change?4 When " solutions " are offered without specification of the means by which they are to be reached , it must be

We believe that resolution of the (urbanI crisis is possible if political majorities are future-oriented enough to adopt constitutional reforms which not only benefit the lower classes but serve the majority s long-run self- interest. If these political majorities have the foresight to adopt fundamental , constitutional- type change, fulfillment can be harnessed to hope and an urban society that is just, humane , and truly free can be a reality,

The authors stop there, They offer no grounds whatever for believing that political majorities

presumed that the

means if any exist have yet to be discovered and that the " solution " is therefore infeasible, Doubtless a " change in the hearts and minds of men " would solve a grear-many problems, But how is it to be brought about? Except as the means are outlined and except as there

will

change t~ir ways and they say not a

word about the steps that one (who?) might take to get them to do so, Those who use the terminology of social science may talk of changing " culture " rather than " hearts and minds, " The fact is, however , that no one knows how to change the culture of any part of the population

tude which seems no less resistant to solution is that of ensuring that

Cohen , in his path- breaking book of nearly twenty years ago,

is some real possibility of their being implemented, such " solutions are mere words, They are seldom if ever labeled as such , however, even when put forward by highly professional social analysts. Consider, for example , the following, written not as a Commencement Day Oration but as a contribution to a leading journal of economics:

the lower class or the upper, whites or Negroes,

pupils or teachers, policemen or criminals, Moreover , even if one did reason to suppose that doing so would be good know how, there is infeasible on other grounds; for example , it might require unconstitutional methods , such as taking infants from their parents at birth , or entail other disadvantages that more than offset its advantages, What can an educational psychologist, Jerome Bruner, mean by writing that the plight of the poor in our society probably cannot be changed without first changing " the society that permits such poverty to exist" and that accordingly his " first recommendation, as a commonsense psychologist and a concerned man, would be that we should transform radically the structure of our society ?(; Can it be that he thinks " society " is an entity having faculties enabling it to " permit that is, to exercise choice regarding them? (If conditions to exist social problem to exist?) any so, why not criticize it for permitting , is it likely to permit " " to is able to permit Assuming that society longer permit what it way that it can no transform it in such a will permit , namely poverty? Assuming that it previously permitted

this, how does one transform radically the structure of a society? (Apparently it is not always easy; Jencks remarks sadly in

Inequality

WHAT CAN BE DONE? / 265

264 / THE UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED

that the rate of social mobility " does not seem to respond to most of the things that social theorists expect it to respond to, 7) Finally,

assuming that the effort would succeed , what grounds are there for supposing that the new , restructured society will not permit evils even worse than poverty? Some " solutions "

are infeasible

because (I) there is no reason to

expect people to do the things that would constitute a solution unless government motivates them to do them , and (2) government for one reason or another cannot so motivate them, If, as Lee Rainwater asserts, " only effective protest can change endemic patterns of police harassment and brutality, or teachers ' indifference and insults , or butchers ' heavy thumbs, or indifferent street cleaning and garbage disposal,"8 then (assuming that effective protest must be carried on . from outside the government) measures to correct these abuses lie beyond the bounds of feasibility, In other words, if there are solutions to these problems they are not governmental ones, which is to say that one cannot implement them by calling into play the state s ultimate monopoly on the use of force, Repeal of the minimum-wage laws is certainly feasible , but elimination of the

informal

minimum wage , which would reduce unem-

ployment among the low-skilled even more , is not. Government cannot prevent the formation of a social definition of what is a decent" wage , and (what amounts to the same thing) it cannot prevent workers from feeling some loss of self-respect in working for peanuts, " From the standpoint of the policy maker , then, the informal minimum wage presents an insoluble problem, In the nature of the case , it is impossible to have a very clear idea of what government can and cannot do in the way of forming public

opinion, Nothing except the elimination of lower- class culture would

contribute as much to a general solution of the urban problem as would certain changes in public opinion for example , greater awareness of the importance of class-cultural and other nonracial factors in the Negro s situation and a more realistic sense of what levels of performance it is reasonable to expect from such institutions as schools and police forces and from the economy as a whole, However , it is very questionable to what extent, if at all, government can bring these changes about, It is a question also whether if it can

that is, whether the unintended and forming capacilong-run effects of a strenuous exercise of its opinionwould not be likely to change American society for the worse

bring them about it

ought

to

i ties ! rather than for the better,

People often respond to government measures by making adaptations the aggregate effect of which is to render the measures ineffec, the principal obstacle in the tive or even injurious, Thus, for example employment by fiscal policy

way of permanently maintaining full

devices is that investors respond to the price outlook in such a way as to check any policy except the impossible one of a continuous and accelerating inflation, Other examples of the same hard-core phenomenon are " workeasy to find, Subsidies to induce employers to hire "

ers achieve very little because the employers tend to make adjustments (which may be perfectly legitimate) that enable them to take the subsidies while employing workers whoemployed are not significantly difanyway, Simiferent from those whom they would have larly, efforts to reduce unemployment, poverty, or slum housing in a more particular city may be counterproductive in that they attract reports from Wall Street Journal poor workers to the city, Thus, the

Detroit: A massive industry effort to help avert future riots Detroit appears to of in unemployed persons possibly thousands be backfiring as hund reds from out of state come to the city seeking work, the swelling The result: Some out- of-staters have failed to get a job, s riot. unemployment that many believe contributed to last July s own

Others have snapped up jobs that might have gone to the city so-called hard-core unemployed,!'

sums at any

There is much to be said for the idea of giving small who might otherwise

hour of day or night to persons, mostly youths, fix" of heroin, It steal or kill to get the price of a few drinks or a " , because of the adaptive would not be feasible to do this, however behavior that it would evoke, Once it became known that money was being given away (and of course the scheme would not work unless it known), the demand would become too great to satisfy, was Essendally the same problem may exist with any welfare program that offers generous support to all who can be considered poor. Such a

,"

266 / THE UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED

WHAT CAN BE DONE? / 267

program may weaken rather than strengthen the self-esteem of its touch a great many much more important causes that would make ~eficiaries by reinforcing their impression that events are beyond: t?elr ,con trol.lO It may also encourage them to adapt to the new The assumption that an improvement in material welfare situatlO ~ m ways that are in the long run disadvantageous to them and bound, to make a major contribution to the solution of almost ~ny destructive of the welfa system itself for example , by taking steps social problem is a pervasive one: bette~ nutrition, better hoUSIng,

riots just as likely as ever.

, make themselves eligIble (the wife leaving her job

, perhaps, or

mg ab ~ut the number of dependents) they may " swamp

" the system

better transportation, better street cleanIng and refus ~ rem?valall such things are commonly seen

as ways of reducIng CrIme , of

with their numbers, As Levitan, Rein , and Marwick remark the family, of encouraging upward social bf Ade- ! preventing the break-up quate benefits to relieve poverty conflict with a coherent incentive mobility, and so on. Although one cannot often find clear evidence system to encourage work" and " all the good will and exhortation of some such effects, Even so, of it , such measures probably do have

v.:elfare reformers have failed to offer a viable solution, . , to the the policymaker must ask with regard to them the question that dIlemma, one was raised about midday meals: Is the contribution that this ~ome " ~olutions " are infeasible because the very " of the pro?e. to the " solution feature(s) of cause can make to the total effect (i, socl , reality that constitute the problem make them impracticable, lem) likely to be more than trivial? Following such as procedure m

Tramlng programs do not as a rule offer any solution to the problem his discussion of the efficacy of various types of social policy in reof hard-core unemployment because the same qualities that make a ducing the " deficits " of the average Negro, James S, Coleman finds :-"orker hard-core also make him unable or unwilling to accept trainthat housing, health , and public education (for example) are fields lng, More ~enerally, giving lower- class persons " really good" jobs is from which the contributions are likely to be small in relation to not a feasible way of inducing them to change their the problem. style of life

good" jobs,really because that very style of life makes it impossible to give them "

Sol ~tions " that deal with minor , as opposed to key or strategic

!3

Even if it is feasible in all other respects, a measure lies outsIde the

bounds of feasibility if its implementation would entail costs that

more than offset its benefits, The proponents of a particular measure factors m a sItuation are also infeasible, To put the matter in another are usually blessed with both myopia and tunnel vision: they can see

way, it does not help to create a necessary condition when there is no only the immediate and direct effects that would follow from the creating the sufficient conditions; similarly, in situations of attainment of their objective; long-run or indirect effects, especially multiple causation , it is of little use to set in motion a cause that ones pertinent to what may be called background values, are quite contributes a trivial amount to the total effect desired when there is no invisible to them. Proponents of rent control , for example , see an ~ to s et in motion those that would contribute a significant amount immediate advantage to the poor in freezing rents at low levels. But to It. It IS less than likely that the McCone Commission they fail to see the harm that this will do to the who le co n:'m ~nity , in its report on the background of the Watts riot, was correct in asserting that " because the harm wIll be indirect and especially to the poor adequate mid- day meal is essential to a meaningful educational but somewhat indirect and more or less delayed, One immediate experi ~nce "I2 (it may ?e a contributing factor , but it is certainly not injury to the poor c ~nsists in preventand therefore hard to see ~sentlal), Even assuming for the sake of argument that the com ing them from outbidding the non poor for housing that they (the SIOn was correct , the conclusion does not follow that a school lunch poor) could afford because they would occupy it more intensively, prog~am would have an appreciable effect on the problem of prevent(As Thomas Sowell points out , rent control drastically reduces a ng n ~ts o ~ the sort that ?ccur~ed in Watts, The school lunch program incentive real estate agents and landlord ~ have to break dow ~ et~IlIc solutIOn , however desirable It might be on other grounds , would not and racial barriers.'4) Another immediate but somewhat indirect way ,of

an -

mis-

pp

g" "

268 / THE UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED

injury to the poor is the lowering of

services

heat and light, for example

~~ ; '

ha

maintenance standards and to what it would be nIce to have

en or what one would do if one hardly any that occurs when the land- were dictator. What is more to the p ~~se ~:o , t however

lord is bound to get the same (fixed) rent no matter how much or little

the longer run and therefore harder to are injuries to neighborhoods and to the city as a

he does for his tenants,

269

WHAT CAN BE DONE?

IS 1

of the feasible measures are accepta e,

s as foll~ws:

In

see whole: the formation of slums as buildings go unrepaired year after year

I, Assure to all equal access to polling

places, courts, and job,

growing frustration and anger of those who cannot move because they . housing, and other markets, 2, Avoid rhetoric tending to raise expectations to unreasonable are not permitted to compete for housing, and the decrease in the total encourage the individual to think that housing supply because investors , who in the absence of rent control and unrealizable levels, to ), not he , is responsible for his ills, and white racism society " (e, would build new units or rehabilitate old ones , decide to put their to exaggerate both the seriousness of social problems and the possibilmoney elsewhere. ity of finding solutions, An important special case of infeasibility resulting from a dispro3, If it is feasible to do so (the disagreement among economists has portion between costs and benefits exists when the implementation of , the

a measure would require organization of a kind unsuitable for the implementation of other , equally desirable measures, Coleman

been noted earlier), use fiscal policy to keep the general unemploy-

zation that cities will fail to do this, he says, but because of organiza-

monopolistic powers, (b) ceasing to overpay for

ment level below 3 percent,

In

any case ,

remove impediments to the

unschooled, the young, Negroes, , in ' making this point , remarks that it is safe to say that no city will employment of the unskilled, the consciously unequalize schools in order to pull suburbanites back into women, and others by (a) repealing the minimum-wage and occupaexercise the city or stabilize neighborhoods, It is not for lack of social organi- tional licensure laws and laws that enable labor unions to

tion that is inappropriate; whether there

could be organization appropriate to solve this problem and yet not inappropriate to solve other problems he considers questionable, " Paradoxically,

cludes, " in

" he con-

this instance organization itself helps bring about disor-

low-skilled public

employment , (c) ceasing to harass private employers who offer low wages and unattractive (but not unsafe) working conditions to

offer wage

workers whose alternative is unemployment , and (d) girls supplements in the form of " scholarships " to enable boys and

ganization and disintegration of the city, "15

who have received little schooling to get jobs with employers who

There follows a list of some of the principal measures that might well be regarded as feasible by one who accepts the analysis in the

curricula so as to cover in nine grades what is now covered in twelve, Reduce the school-

offer valuable on- the-job training,

previous chapters. (It will be recalled that by "

feasible " is meant capable. of being implemented and likely to accomplish something of more than trivial value at a cost not obviously prohibitive. ) It will be

seen that the list is rather short; that many of the items on it are not constructive that is , they call for not doing something; and that far from being a comprehensive program for making the city into what one would like , it hardly begins to solve any of the problems that

have been under discussion, Even if all the recommendations

were

carried out to the full , the urQ,i;!n situation would not be fundamentally improved. Feasible measures are few and unsatisfactory as compared

4, Revise elementary and secondary school

leaving age to fourteen (grade 9), and encourage

(or perhaps even

require) boys and girls who are unable or unwilling to go to college to take a full- time job or else enter military service or a civilian youth corps, Guarantee loans for higher education to all who require them. Assure the availability of serious on- the-job training for all boys and girls who choose to go to work rather than to go to college, hard5, Define poverty in terms of the nearly fixed standard of " relative deprivation ship, " rather than in terms of the elastic one of " and bring all incomes above the poverty line, Distinguish categori-

cally between those of the poor who are competent to manage their affairs and those of them who are not, the latter category consisting of

WHAT CAN BE DONE? / 27

270 / THE UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED

the insane , the severely retarded , the senile , the lower class (inveterate problem families ), and unprotected children. Make cash income transfers to the first category by means of a negative income tax , the

rate structure of which gives the recipient a strong incentive to work.

Whenever possible , assist the incompetent poor with goods and ser-

vices rather than with cash; depending

upon the

degree of their

incompetence , encourage (or require) them to reside in an institution or semi- institution (for example , a closely supervised public housing project). 6. Give intensive birth-control guidance to the incompetent poor. 7. Pay " problem families " to send infants and children to day nurseries and preschools , the programs of which are designed to bring the children into normal culture. 8. Regulate insurance and police practices so as to give potential

victims of crime greater incentive to take reasonable precautions to prevent it. 9. Intensify police patrol in

high-crime areas; permit the police to

stop and frisk" and to make misdemeanor arrests on probable cause; institute a system of " negative bail" that is, an arrangement whereby a suspect who is held in jail and is later found innocent is paid compensation for each day of confinement. 10. Reduce drastically the time elapsing between arrest , trial, and imposition of punishment. I I. Abridge to an appropriate degree the freedom of those who in the opinion of a court are extremely likely to commit violent crimes. Confine and treat drug addicts. 12. Make it clear in advance that those who incite to riot will be

severely punished. 13. Prohibit " live "

television coverage of riots and of incidents

likely to provoke them.

There can be little doubt that with a few exceptions these recomunacceptable. A politician with a heterogeneous

mendations are

constituency would strenuously oppose almost all of them.

In most matters , the actual course of policy is likely to be the very opposite of the one recommended , whichever party is in power. Government

is more likely to promote i:t"nequal

than equal access to job and

housing markets either by failing to enforce laws prohibiting disafcrimination or by " enforcing " them in a way (for example , by " firmative action ) that is

itself discriminatoryP It is also

more

likely to raise expectations than to lower them; to emphasize " white

racism " to de-

as

the

continuing cause of the Negro s handicaps rather than

emphasize it; to increase the minimum wage rather than to

decrease or repeal it; to keep children who cannot or will not learn in school a longer rather than a shorter time; to define poverty in terms of relative deprivation rather than in terms of hardship; to deny the existence of class-cultural differences rather than to try to distinguish the competent from the incompetent poor on this basis; to reduce the potential victim s incentives to take precautions against crime rather than to increase them; to give the police less discretionary authority rather than more; to increase the time between arrest , trial , and

punishment rather than to decrease it; and to enlarge the freedom of those who have shown themselves to be very likely to commit violent crimes rather than to restrict it.

One reason why these recommendations are politically out of the question is that there exist well-armed and strategically placed veto which The Lonely Crowd) groups (as David Riesman calls them in

can prevent them from being seriously discussed, much less adopted. The recommendation of the Moynihan Report , that government try to strengthen the Negro family, is a case in point: official consideration of this idea had to stop abruptly when the civil-rights organizations and their allies objected. 18 What these organizations did with this proposal organized labor could do with one to free up the labor

market, organized teachers could do with one to reduce the schoolleaving age , organized social workers could do with one to define poverty in terms of hardship, and so on. That interest groups have such power does not represent a malfunctioning of the political system. When they designed the system , the Founding Fathers took great pains to distribute power widely so that

factions " would check one another, thus preventing the rise of any sort of tyranny. The arrangement has worked remarkably well , but there is no denying that it has the defects of its virtues. One of these defects is that a small minority can often veto measures that would

benefit a large majority.

272 / THE UNHEAVENL.Y CITY REVISITED

WHAT CAN BE DONE? / 273

Obviously, proposals are frequently adopted despite the opposition of such groups, Why does this not happen in the case of the measures recommended above? There are more prospective gainers than losers from each measure (if this were not thought to be so, the measures would not have been recommended); why, then , do not the prospective gainers organize themselves to overcome the opposition of the veto groups? At the very least , why do they not themselves function as I veto groups when the opposites of the measures that would serve

their interests are proposed?

For example , if they

cannot get the

minimum-wage law repealed, why do they not at least prevent the rate from being raised?

Part of the answer to these questions is that in most instances

the

benefits from the recommended measures would be what economists

call " public goods that is , goods such that if anyone benefited would benefit. This being the case , the prospective gainers can " ride free " and therefore have little or no incentive to contribute to the support of an organization to fight for the benefits, !!) Another part of the answer is that the voter must usually accept or reject combinations of measures (what the candidate or the party stands for); he cannot pick and choose , he must cast his vote one way or the everyone

other. His choice therefore turns upon his evaluation of the one or two

items in the " package " that touch his primary (which in many cases

means his bread-and- butter) interests most closely; if he thinks that

his primary interests are well served by these one or two items, he will vote in favor of the " package " even though it contains many other items that are undesirable from the standpoint of his subsidiary

interests, Thus ,

even if the measures

recommended above would

benefit every voter without exception , there would nevertheless be a unanimous vote against them if they were presented in combinations such that each voter could serve one of his primary interests only by voting against them, In their effort to bring together winning coalitions of interests, candidates and parties tend to be very much aware of such considerations, Public opinion consists largely of opinions on subjects that do not touch the primary interests of the one holding the opinion , and if political choices were"" made only in the light of primary interests, public opinion would matter very little, In fact , of course , it matters a

good deal. And there can be no doubt that it supports practically none of the recommendations on the list above, 21 Indeed, in many matters it favors the opposite, In part, then, the perversity that government exhibits in its choice of measures reflects a corresponding perversity in public opinion,

It is pertinent to inquire , therefore , why

public opinion

is perverse,

An answer sometimes given is that in matters such as these it is generally dominated by the opinion of the well-educated and well-off, These people (so the argument runs) are indifferent to or downright hostile to the interest of the less well-off and the poor. In short , the masses " are against the recommended measures because they have been misled by an elite that is looking after its own interests, The trouble with this theory is that with respect to most measures it runs counter to the facts, 22 The well-off are not benefited by an

increase in the minimum wage or by any other measures that price low- value labor out of the market and onto the welfare rolls, They are

not benefited by laws that keep children who cannot or will not learn in schools that they (the well-oft) must support, They are not benefited by the making of sweeping charges about " white racism " or by crisis-mongering of any kind, Public opinion is indeed decisively influenced in many matters by the opinion of the well-educated and well-off, But this opinion, which reflects the " service " ideal of the upper class, tends to be altruistic, And it is precisely this altruistic bias that accounts for its perversity, The American political style was formed largely in the upper classes and, within those classes , mainly by people of dissentingProtestant and Jewish traditions, Accordingly, it is oriented toward the future and toward moral and material progress , for the individual and for the society as a whole, The American is confidentthat with a sufficient effort all difficulties can be overcome - and all problems solved, and he feels a strong obligation to try to improve not only himself but everything else: his community, his society, the whole was a world, Ever since the days of Cotton Mather , whose Bonifacius how- to- do- it book on the doing of good, service has been the American motto, To be sure , practice has seldom entirely corresponded to principles, The principles, however , have always been influential and they have sometimes been decisive, They can be summarized in two

111

274

THE UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED

WHAT CAN BE DONE?

very simple rules: first , DON' T JUST SIT THERE, DO SOMETHING! and second, DO GOOD! These two rules contribute to the perversity that characterizes the

for that of the community, the shared values of which are ritually asserted and vindicated by the doing of it, For this reason, good done

choice of measures for dealing with the urban " crisis, " From the President on down everyone (almost everyone) enjoys the feeling of

exhilaration when a bold step is taken, and that enjoyment is no less

when, as it almost

always must be , the step is taken blindfold. 23

i

Believing that any problem can be solved if only we try hard enough, l we do not hesitate to attempt what we do not have the least idea of

how to do and what , in some instances, reason and experience both tell us cannot be done, Not recognizing any bounds to what is feasible the we are not reconciled to - indeed , we do not even perceive

275

otherwise than by intention, especially good done in pursuance of ends that are selfish or even " nontuistic, " is not really " good" at all. For this reason, too, actions taken from good motives count as good even when in fact they do harm, By far the most effective way of helping the poor is to keep profit-seekers competing vigorously for their trade as consumers and for their services as workers; this, however, is not a way of helping that affords members of the upper classes the chance to flex their moral muscles or the community the

chance to dramatize its commitment

to the

values that hold it

together. The way to do these things is with a War on Poverty; even if

necessity, so frequently arising, of choosing the least objectionable the War should turn out to have precious little effect on the incomes the their incomes lower indeed, even if it should among courses of action that are all very unsatisfactory, That some of the poor children simply cannot be taught much in school is one example of a undertaking would nevertheless represent a sort of secular religious fact that the American mind will not entertain, Our cultural ideall revival that affords the altruistic classes opportunities to bear witness requires that we give every child a good education whether he wants it I to the cultural ideal and, by doing so, to strengthen society s adheror not and whether he is capable of receiving it or not. If at first we l ence to it. One recalls Macaulay s remark about the attitude of the don t succeed, we must try, try again, And if in the end we don English Puritans toward bear- baiting: that they opposed it not for the lower the schoolsucceed, we must feel guilty for our failure, To suffering that it caused the bear but for the pleasure that it gave the leaving age would be , in the terms of this secular religion , a shirking spectators, Perhaps it is not far- fetched to say that the present- day of the task for which we were chosen, outlook is similar: the reformer wants to improve the situation of the The recommendations listed earlier are mostly unacceptable , even poor, the black, the slum dweller, and so on, not so much to make repellent, to public opinion because what they call for does not appear them better off materially as to make himself and the whole society to be and (although this is beside the point) may in fact not be morally better off morally, improving either to the doer or to the object of his doing, It does not There is something to be said for this attitude, The Puritans were appear to be improving to a youth to send him to work rather than to surely right in thinking it worse that people should enjoy the sufferschool , especially as this is what it is in one s interest as a taxpayer to ings of animals than that animals should suffer. And the present- day do, It does not appear to be improving to a recidivist to keep him in reformers are surely right in thinking it more important that society jail pending trial , especially as this is what accords with one s feelings ~ display a concern for what is right and just than that the material level of hostility toward him, It does not appear to be improving to a slum of the poor, which is already above the level of hardship in most cases, dweller to say that if he has an adequate income but prefers to spend it be raised somewhat higher. There are problems here , however, One is for things other than housing he must not expect the public to interto keep the impulse for doing good from gushing incontinently into vene , especially as it is in one s " selfish" interest that the public not domestic Marshall Plans, Freedom Budgets, mass extravaganzas intervene, In reality, the doing of good is not so much for the benefit into which billions are poured for no one knows what and the like doers whose of those to whom the good is done as it is for that of the or how; snrely, if it is to be morally significant , good cannot be done moral faculties are activatectand invigorated by the doing of it, and from motives that are contrived for the individual by people who have

WHAT CAN BE DONE? 276

277

THE UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED

large organizations to maintain or foisted upon him by the mass; ; (and of course " solutions " along with them) in order to attract attenmedia, Another problem is to find ways of doing good that are. : tion and to kindle the interest and enthusiasm needed to carry him relatively harmless

that do not greatly injure those to whom the into office and enable him, once there, to levy taxes and do the other

goo~ i s done (as, for example , children who cannot or will not learn unpopular things of which governing largely consists, Although in the are many problems, there are still not are I?Jured by too- long confinement in schoo!), that are not grossly; society that actually exists there -" enough about which anyone can say or do anything very unfaIr to third parties (taxpayers , for example), and that do not. enough need for program material. Moreover, tend to damage the consensual basis, and thus everitually the political p.elpful- to meet his constant

are not necessarily the ones that

freedom, of the society (as headline-catching official declarationS'the real and important problems about " white racism " do), Still another problem is to retain, as aIi; people want to hear about; a politician

Itself."24

may be able to attract more and thus better serve his office and the perception of the dangers of the moral life purpose , which is to generate power with which to take ?Ioral realism govern - by putting real problems in an unreal light or by presenting (again like the TV ; illusory ones as if they were real. The politician important matter If the process of middle- and upper- class- ification tends to make news commentator) can never publicly discuss an , ifs, ands , and buts public opinion more perverse , it also tends to make it more important ; with the seriousness that it deserves; time is short Half a century or more ago, the basis of city and state political make tedious listening, and there are always some in the audience and therefore , to a large extent , of national political power ' who will be confused or offended by what is said and others who power against the as well- was the machine, The bosses who ran it kept themselves in' will try to twist it into a weapon that they , thecan lessuse likelihood of speaker, reaching power by dispensing patronage and by trading in ethnic, sectional, : Besides, the deeper a discussion goes and party loyalties, and therefore could pretty well disregard public an outcome that the politician can use to generate support, 25 Middle- and upper- class- The changes brought about in the political system by the process of opinion when it suited them to do SO, ification have greatly reduced its effectiveness ification rendered this system obsolete and brought into being one middle- and upper- class-

element of the cultural ideal itself, what Lionel Trilling has termed attention and create more enthusiasm

in which the politician , in order to compete successfully for office

in finding the terms on which people will act together or even live

of voters (homeowners,. together in peace, The upper- class ideal recommends participation as has to combine offers of benefits to taxpayers, and so on) with appeals to general ideas and conceptions of intrinsically good, but unfortunately, the more participants there are, the larger the number of issues that must be dealt with and the greater the public interest. Whereas the old system had promised personal the disagreements about each, The ideal also requires that issues be the rewards, the new one promises social reforms, Accordingly, be settled on their merits, not by logrolling, and that their merits The amount of filled one, " smoke- filled room was replaced by the talkunder not, talk which is now expended on all subjects of human interest is; conceived of in terms of general moral principles that may filled room, it , be compromisedP In the smokeconcepany circumstances something of which a previous age has had not the smallest moved men; these tion " E, L. Godkin remarked at the end of the last century, adding was party loyalty and private interest that mainly " In the talk- filled room, doing business, motives always permitted " more and more men will be that " the affairs of nations and of , and therefore the longer classes

regulated by talk, "26 But even Godkin , since he did not anticipate ' righteous indignation is the main motive television, had not the smallest conception of the extent to which the talk continues, the clearer it becomes to each side that the other affairs would be regul~!ed by talk in our day, . tnust either be shouted down or knocked down,

The politician, like the TV news commentator , must always have; If we look toward the future , it is impossible not to be apprehensomething to say even when nothing urgently needs to be said, If he lived in a society without problems, he would have to invent some ; sive. The frightening fact is that large numbers of persons are being

280 / THE UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED

are inseparably connected with developments that almost everyone

welcomes: the growth and spread of affluence has enabled millions of people to move from congested cities to new and more spacious homes in the suburbs; the availability of a large stock of relatively good housing in the central cities and older suburbs has enabled the Negro to escape the semi-slavery of the rural South and , a century late to move into industrial society; better public health measures and facilities have cut the deathrate of the lower class; the war and postwar baby boom have left the city with more adolescents and youths than

ever before; and a widespread and general movement upward on the

THE PROSPECT / 28

done , and therefore end in frustration, loss of mutual respect and trust , anger, and even coercion,

Even granting that in general the effect of government programs is to exacerbate the problems of the cities, it might perhaps be argued

that they have a symbolic value that is more than redeeming, What that we economist Kenneth Boulding has said of national parks seem to need them " as we seem to need a useless dome on the capitol as a symbol of national identity and of that mutuality of concern which government would be naked coer-

and interest without cion " 1 - may possibly apply as well to Freedom Budgets, domestic

class-cultural scale has made poverty, squalor , ignorance , and brutal- ~ Marshall Plans, and other such concoctions, That government proity conditions that have always and everywhere been regarded as grams do not succeed in reducing welfare dependency, preventing , for want of inevitable in the nature of things appear as anomalies that should f crime , and so on, is not a weighty objection to them if not worth saving, them the feeling would spread that the society is " What stands in the way of dealing effectively with these problems f There is an imminent danger, however, that the growing multitude of (insofar as their nature admits of their being dealt with by govern- I programs that are intended essentially as gestures of goodwill may ment) is mainly the virtues of the American political system and of constitute a bureaucratic juggernaut which cannot be stopped and the American character. It is because governmental power is widely which will symbolize not national identity and mutual concern but distributed that organized interests are so often able to veto mearather divisiveness, confusion, and inequity, If a symbol is wanted, a sures that would benefit large numbers of people, I t is the generous useless dome is in every way preferable, and public-regarding impulses of voters and taxpayers that impel That government cannot solve the problems of the cities and is them to support measures for example , the minimum wage and likely to make them worse by trying does not necessarily mean that compulsory high school attendance calamity impends, Powerful accidental (by which is meant , nongovthe ultimate effect of which is to make the poor poorer and more demoralized, Our devotion to ernmental and, more generally, nonorganizational) forces are at work the doctrine that all men are created equal discourages any explicit that tend to alleviate and even to eliminate the problems. Hard as it recognition of class-cultural differences and leads to " democratic may be for a nation of inveterate problem-solvers to believe , social and often misleading problems sometimes disappear in the normal course of events, formulations of problems: for example poverty as lack of income and material resources (something exterOne powerful accidental force at work is economic growth nal to the individual) rather than as inability or unwillingness to Because capital tends to increase by geometric progression , a rich take account of the future or to control impulses (something intercountry becomes exceedingly rich in the space of a few years. If real nal). Sympathy for the oppressed , indignation at the oppressor , and per capita productivity grows at 2, 2 percent per year and if the a wish to make amends for wrongs done by one s ancestors lead to a current trend toward reduced fertility continues (the norm being two misrepresentation of the Negro as the near- helpless victim of children) the population by the end of the century, about 270 million, white racism. " Faith in the perfectibility of man and confidence will produce and consume almost two and one- half times as much as the population will be approaching 2040, that good intentions together JYith strenuous exertions will hasten at present, By the year his progress onward and upward lead to bold programs that promise stability at about 320 million and will produce about seven times as to do what no one knows how to do and what perhaps cannot be much as at present, 2 These are by no means implausible assumptions,

be removed entirely and at once,

,"

282 / THE UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED

THE PROSPECT / 283

but even on more conservative ones the end of poverty, in the sense

hardship, is in sight.:!

As this suggests, a second and interacting accidental force of great importance is demographic change, The baby boom that occurred after the Second War resulted in the 1960 S in an unprecedented number of teen-agers, The birthrate has since fallen

entirely accidental. If either of the factors changes, this will cause a change in the other factor, too, and start a process of interaction where the change in one factor will continuously be supported by the reaction of the other factor. G

It is impossible to judge how much effect these accidental forces sharply, will have on the lower class, Rapid economic growth and the prospect because couples took to marrying later and having fewer. children; after 1975 the number and proportion of young people in the popula- of high returns to investment in the " human capital" represented by oneself or one s children may, as suggested in Chapter Ten, encourtion will probably cease to grow for about thirty years, With fewer age rapid mobility from the lower class, Conceivably, however , increaschildren to support and educate , there will be more money to devote to other things, (Schools are by far the biggest item of local expendi-

ing affluence might have an opposite effect: generous welfare pro-

ture; the decrease in the number of children will therefore do much to relieve the " fiscal crisis " of the cities, ) The problem of maintaining order will be reduced only slightly; after 1975 the proportion of males

grams, for example, may destroy more incentives to provide for the future than better job and other opportunities create; moreover , the diffusion of more present-oriented ways in the middle and upper classes

ages 15 to 24 to the total population will remain for

might lessen any pressure that lower-class

about the same as it was in 1965,

three decades

people feel to change

their ways or even discourage them from doing so, An increase in the

(if not the relative) size of the lower class is by no means out A third such force -:- perhaps the most important of all- is the f' absolute process of middle- and upper- class- ification, For the of the question, Unless the increase were very large , however , it would reasons that were given in Chapter Ten, it is problematic, to say the least not necessarily lead to a radical worsening of the situation or precipi, whether the lower class will be absorbed into the outlook and style of life of the mainstream, " With this small but nevertheless important exception

it seems highly probable that there will

continue to be a general

upward movement all along the class-cultural scale, This will mean a softening of manners , better performance in schools , and less violence of the sort that serves to emphasize masculinity by acts of daring and aggression, " As the larger culture becomes more cerebral " Wolfgang and Ferracuti write the refined symbolic forms of masculinity (for example , debating societies, musical virtuosity, and literary talent) should be more fully adopted, Middle- and upper-class- ification also implies a reduction in racial prejudice and discrimination. This should proceed with gathering momentum because of the operation of what Gunnar Myrdal , in American Dilemma called " the principle of cumulation, White prejudice and discrimination keep the Negro low in standards of living, health , education , manners and morals, This , in turn, gives support to white prejudice, White prejudiclf"and Negro standards thus mutually cause " each other." , Such a static " accommodation " is , however,

tate a crisis in the life of the nation, Moreover, if an increase is not out of the question, neither is a decrease, situation does not warrant the alarmist tone objective Although the of much that is said and written about the city, the

subjective

one may,

importance However much the accidental forces may reduce the discussion, they may have no of the problems that have been under real

impact on their

seeming

importance, Indeed, this is likely to grow, for

some of the very same factors that improve the objective situation also raise people' s standards and expectations , thus leaving the subjective and perhaps even worse - than it was to begin situation no better with, What people

think

a situation is may (as sociologist Robert K,

Merton has pointed out) become an integral part of that situation, and

development, A false public definition of the situation may, as Merton says , evoke new behavior that makes the originally false definition come true , thus perpetuating "7 In short, wrong public definitions of urban proba " reign of error. lems may leCl.d to behavior that will make matters worse despite the ameliorating influence of the accidental forces, This possibility is most painfully apparent in the case of the Negro, therefore a factor in its subsequent

284 / THE UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED

THE PROSPECT / 285

That racial prejudice has long been declining and may be expected to continue to decline at an accelerating rate counts for little if the Negro thinks that white racism is as pervasive as ever; that his opportunities to improve his position by acquiring skills are at last fairly good counts for little if he thinks that " massive " government welfare housing, and other programs and only these can help him, If he misperceives the situation in these ways, he is likely to do things that are counterproductive (for example , to cut himself off from " white schools , jobs, and politics and to enter the fantasy world of black separatism), Such a course , if carried far enough, may validate his original (false) hypothesis that is, he may become in fact as depen-

and ,

a fortiori , the entry of the poor

especially the black poor

- on a large scale, but they did not significantly change the pattern

of metropolitan growth; this was determined by accidental forces the demographic, technological , economic, and class-cultural im-

peratives described in Chapters Two and Three, Although it is easy to exaggerate the importance , either for good or ill , of the measures that government has adopted or might adopt , there

does appear to be a danger to the good health of the society in the tendency of the public to define so many situations as " critical problems - a definition that implies (I) that " solutions " exist or can be

dent upon government programs as he (wrongly) supposed himself to be and may revive the fact of white prejudice by giving it some

found and (2) that unless they are found and applied at once , disaster

objective grounds to feed upon, Nothing could be so tragic and ironic as the acceptance of a false public definition of the situation that proves to be a self- fulfilling prophecy of racial hatred, Even if nonracial factors had not in recent years superseded the racial ones as the Negro s main handicap,

although there are many difficulties to be coped with , dilemmas to be faced, and afflictions to be endured , there are very few problems that can be solved; it is also that although much is seriously wrong with the city, no disaster impends unless it be one that results from public misconceptions that are in the nature of self- fulfilling prophecies. Insofar as delusory and counterproductive public definitions of the situation arise from biases that lie deep within the culture (for example , from the impulse to DO SOMETHING! and to DO GOOD!), they are likely to persist in the face of all experience. To exhort the upper classes to display more of the quality that Trilling calls moral realism would be to offer a problem- begging " solution " since the very want of moral realism that constitutes the problem would prevent their recognizing the need of it, The biases of the culture limit the range of possibilities, but they do not determine fully how the public will define the situation, This definition is in large part the result of a process of opinion formation that goes on within a relatively small world of officials , leaders of civic associations and other interest groups, journalists, and social scientists, especially economists; from this small world opinion is passed on to the public- at- Iarge through the mass media , books, classroom instruction, campaign oratory, after- dinner speeches , and so on, Needless to say, a vast amount of misinformation , prejudice , and illogic enters into the process of opinion formation, (The agony of the cities, someone has remarked, is what the network executive and his

it would be

well to pretend that they had , for a self- fulfilling prophecy of the unimportance of racial factors would be as great a

blessing as its opposite would be a curse. Except as they create , or reinforce , counterproductive public definitions of problems and thereby encourage a " reign of error wrong governmental measures are not likely to lead to catastrophe or even to any very significant worsening of the situation, Most wrong

measures will lead to nothing worse than some additional waste and delay, usually a trivial amount (One gets a sense of how unimportant even " important " governmental actions may be from one economist's estimate that the elimination of

monopoly in the United States in

1929 would have raised income by no more than II I 3

of I percent

and from the estimate of another that benefits attributable to better resource allocation by virtue of the Common Market would also be much less than I percent B) The governmental measures having the largest effect upon the city since the turn of the century are probably subsidization of truck"and automobile transportation and subsidization of home ownership for the well-off; these measures certainly hastened the departure of the white middle class from the central city

will befall, The import of what has been said in this book is that

286

THE UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED

fel1ow-commuters on the Long Island Railroad they make their agonized way to and

from

see out the window as

their offices in Manhattan,

Within the past decade or two , developments have occurred that could make for a more realistic view of the urban situation for example the number of technically trained persons working on urban problems has increased greatly, their resources for gathering and manipulating

data and the analytical apparatus that they can bring to bear upon policy questions are much improved , and what they have to say is taken much more seriously by politicians and administrators and therefore also by journalists. 9 It would not be surprising if the conventional wisdom were to be very much revised in the next decade or two as a consequence of these developments, Turnover within the small world of opinion-makers is rapid, and the young newcomers in that world tend to be open to new ideas and even in search of them, Because communication within the small world and between it and the public-at- Iarge is excellent , a new definition of the situation , once formulated, could catch on very quickly,

It would be pleasant to be able to end this discussion on that relatively optimistic note. Unfortunately, another side to the matter requires mention, Technically trained persons have their own characteristic biases , and if their view of the city is different from that of the commuter on the Long Island Railroad it is not necessarily more realistic. Moreover, as the technician comes to playa more important part in policy-making he is bound to come more and more under the discipline of large organizations, especially foundations and government agencies, whose maintenance and enhancement depend in some way upon the elaboration of an alarmist , or at any rate expansionist

public definition of the situation, That young newcomers to the small

world of opinion-makers tend to be open to new ideas is not altogether reassuring either, for they may tend to accept new ideas just because

they are new. To the pessimist ,

the prospect is that a new

conventional wisdom about the problems of the city, the product of many millions of dollars ' expenditure on research , cast in the language of systems analysis and the computer , will only compound the existing confusion, The optimist , however , will see reason to believe that facts, rational anary~sis, and deliberation about the nature of the public interest will playa somewhat larger part than hitherto in the formation of both opinion and policy.

APPENDIX

Note on the Size

of the Social Classes

which one can make reasonably good from not exist estimates of the size of the various social classes as defined in this book, Under the circumstances, the best that can be done is to AT A do

interpret data on the size of the classes

otherwise defined,

This would

be a hazardous proceeding at best , but it is all the more so because the various estimates that have been made are all extremely fragmentary, (New York: Frank Riessman , in The Culturally Deprived Child Harper & Row , 1962), says that in 1950 approximately one child in ten in the fourteen largest cities was culturally deprived , that by 1960 this number had risen to one in three , and that it might reach one in two by 1970, He does not say how these estimates were arrived at interchangeably culturally deprived however , and he uses the term with educationally deprived , deprived, underprivileged , disadvan-

taged, lower class , and lower socioeconomic group.

particular cities for , no way of knowing how represen, however or parts of cities; there is Less impressionistic estimates have been made

tative the place studied is of all urban places

or even of places of

about the same size and demographic type. Pierre Martineau , using a probability area sample of 3, 880 households, divided metropolitan Chicago on the basi~ of an index of occupation, sources of income and housing type as follows (the terms are not his): upper 8, I , middle 28-4, working 44, , and lower 19. 5, Pierre Martineau, " Social 23:2 Classes and Spending Behavior The Journal of Marketing,

, p,

288 / THE UNHEAVENLY CITY

REVISITED

(October 1958); reprinted in Martin M. Grossack, ed. Understanding Consumer Behavior (Boston: Christopher Publishing House , 1966 , p. f 139), Richard A. Cloward and James A. Jones constructed an index of social class on the basis of education , occupation of head of

household, and total family income adjusted by number of persons in the family, (" The typical lower class person in our index has had less than an eighth grade education , is employed as an unskilled or service worker , and lives in a family whose income per person is less than the minimum wage " p, 196, ) The lower East Side of New York , they found , was 44 percent lower class , 36 percent working class , and 20 percent lower-middle or above, In A, Harry Passow , ed" Education in Depressed Areas (New York: Columbia Teachers College , 1963),

On the basis of a 5 percent sample of New Haven , Redlich

APPENDIX / 289

Chicago metropolitan area, Richard p, Coleman , for Social Research

Inc" using two main indices, male occupation distribution and educational background , sometimes supplemented by two others , family income and housing conditions , has prepared the following estimates on the basis of 1960 Census data (the terminology is not his):

Class

0 pper Middle Working Lower

Hollingshead and

(Social Class and Mental Illness New York: Wiley, 1958

All urban total

Nonwhites

Whites

3 I

202) offer the following measures by race: (Sol/ree:

Class

White

II (Opper?)

11.7 20, 50, 17,

III (M iddle?)

IV (Working?)

(Lower?)

Negro 1.0

36, 58,

Although Hollingshead and Redlich define class in terms of position in a deference hierarchy, it is noteworthy that the groups that emerge are subcultures that closely resemble the ideal types described in this book, Lee Rainwater in

Family Design

Social Research Inc" " The Urban Negro: Sampling Considera-

tions and Statistical Overview " August 1968, p, 24,

(Chicago: Aldine Publishing

Company, 1965, p, 24) says that the lower class (lower lower in his terminology) " represents about one- quarter of the working class and about thirteen percent of the population of a city like Chicago,

" This estimate was based (he writes in a personal communication) on studies using one or another form of W. Lloyd Warner Index of Status Characteristics especially a study by Social Research , Inc" of the

AU, S, Bureau of the Census report Socioeconomic Characteristics (Series P- 23, No, 12, July 3 I , 1964), combines measures of occupation, income , and education in a socioeconomic status (SES) score, If persons in the lowest 20 percent of SES scores are taken to be lower class (a janitor or kitchen worker with an income slightly below the poverty line and with seven grades of schooling would have scored near the upper limit of this class on each count), 6 percent of whites and 20 percent of nonwhites in central of the Population: 1960

cities of standard metropolitan statistical areas (SMSA' s) of more than 250, 000 population belong to that class. For the procedure by which the scores were constructed, see U, S, Bureau of the Census Methodology and Scores of Socioeconomic Status Working Paper No. 15, 1963, The following table was prepared from tabulations run by the Census Bureau under contract for Professor Basil Zimmer of Brown University and kindly made available by him,

290 / THE UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED

PERCENT DISTRIBUTION OF THE POPULATION IN SOCIOECONOMIC STATUS CATEGORIES FOR STANDARD METROPOLITAN STATISTICAL AREAS, 250 000 AND OVER POPULATION CENTRAL CITY

SES Score 80-99 (U pper?)

50-79 (Middle?) 20-49 (Working?) 0-19 (Lower?)

White

Nonwhite

URBAN PART OF RING

White

APPENDIX B

Nonwhite

l Selected References of

The Unheavenly City l Writings Pertaining to

SYMPOSIA

: Duane

Banfield' s Unheavenly City: A Symposium and Response Lockard " Patent Racism ; Russell D, Murphy " Challenge to Orthodoxy ; Arthur Naftalin " Unseen Hand" ; Edward C, Banfield

TRANS- action, Vol. 8, Nos, 5 and 6 (March/April 197 I), pp. 69-78, The Unheavenly City: Acrimony and Accolades : Peter H, Rossi The Poor Need Not The City As Purgatory ; Carl B. Stokes " In Reply, "

Always be With Us ; Scott Greer " Put Thy Love in Order ; Robert ; Robert J, Lampman " Moral Realism and the Poverty Question E, Agger " Class , Race and Reaction: A Trivial but Dangerous Analysis, " and Edward C. Banfield " Putting Social Science to Vol. 5 I, Social Science Quarterly

Work is a Risky Undertaking, No. 4 (March , 197 I), pp. 816-859,

The Local Government Law Round Table Council Meets Banfield'

The Unheavenly City, Association of American Law Schools Vol. 20, No, 2 (December, Round Table UCLA Law Review

1972), pp. 387-41 I.

,,,""",,,""," ",

,"

"

292 / THE UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED

REVIEW ARTICLES Harvey Averch and Robert A. Levine

Two Models of the Urban Crisis: An Analytical Essay on Banfield and Forrester Policy Sciences Vol. 2 , No, 2 (June , 197 I), pp. 143- 158,

Worth Bateman and Harold M, Hochman

Social Problems and the

Urban Crisis: Can Public Policy Make a Difference?"

Vol. LXI:2 (May, 197

Economic Review

David Elesh

The Journal of

Human Resources

Chapter Notes

American

I), pp. 346- 359, Vol. VI, I

CHAPTER

(Spring,

1971), pp. 251- 256,

Joseph F. Freeman III

Toward an Understanding of the Urban Crisis, The Political Science Reviewer Vol. I (Fall , 197 I), pp, 125- 153. John Friedmann The Unheavenly City, Journal of American Institute of Planners (March , 197 I), pp. 122 125. Irving Kristol The Cities: A Tale o f Two Classes Fortune (June

1970), 7.164,

David S, Mundel The Emporer Time Horizon - A Naked Walk l Through the Urban Crisis Northwestern University Law Review Vol. 67, No. 2 (1972), pp. 303- 316. Rober ~ Nisbet The Urban Crisis Revisited The Intercollegiate RevIew Vol. 7, No, I (Fall , 1970), pp, 1Gary T, Schwartz Review

Banfield: The Unheavenly City,

UCLA Law

I), pp, 148Survival of the Fattest New York Review of

Vol. 19, No. I (October, 197

Richard Sennett

(August 13, 1970). A Theory of the Lower Class Edward Banfield: The Maverick of Urbanology, The Atlantic (September , 1970), Books

Richard Todd pp. 5 I- 55,

ARTICLES ABOUT THE BOOK' S RECEPTION T. R. Marmor Banfield' s ' Heresy,' Commentary (July, 1972), pp, 86-88. Patricia McLaughlin Is Banfield Really Diabolical?," The Pennsylvania Gazette Vgt. 72 , No, 2 (November , 1973), pp, 25- 30,

Introduction Census defined as " urban " places, unincorporated as well as incorporated, with 2, 500 inhabitants or more (excluding persons living in rural portions of extended cities) as well as other territory within Urbanized Areas, An " Urbanized Area" comprises at least one city of 50, 000 inhabitants (the central city ) plus contiguous, closely settled areas (" urban fringe ), A Standard Metropolitan Statistical Area (SMSA)" is a county or group of contiguous counties (except in New England) containing a city (or " twin cities) of at least 50, 000 population; contiguous counties are included in an SMSA if they are essentially metropolitan in character and are socially and economically integrated with the central city, That part of the United States lying outside of any SMSA is " nonmetropolitan, " All ofthese definitions were somewhat different in 1960 and also in 1950, See Daniel j, Elazar, " Are We a Nation of Cities?, The Public Interest (Summer 1966), pp, 42-44, 2, Sloan R, Wayland, " Old Problems , New Faces, and New Standards " in A (New York: Columbia Harry Passow , ed" Education in Depressed Areas University Teachers College, 1963), p, 66, 3, Irving Hoch, " Urban Scale and Environmental Quality, " in Population Resources , and the Environment voL III of task force reports of Commission

I. The 1970

for 1966,

on Population Growth and the American Future, Ronald G, Ridker, ed,

(Washington, D, c.,

Government Printing Office , 1972), p, 243, The figures are

4, According to the U , S, Public Health Service, the most polluted air is nowhere

near as dangerous as inhaled cigarette smoke, It is of interest also that the mortality rate from emphysema is higher in rural parts of New York than in (New York Times October 30 , 1970) and that the state metropolitan ones with thehig.hest death rate from respiratory disease is Vermont

Times December 20, 1972),

A ir Quality Data A ir Pollution Measurements of the National Air Sampling Network - 1961 , and The Fourth Annual Report of the Council on Environmental

5, For data see U , S, Environmental Protection Agency, annual,

1957

(New York

,"

" "

THE UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED

294

S, Government Printing Office , September 1973, pp, 265-

Quality,

275,

whose incomes were below the poverty line, more than half paid more than half of their incomes in rent. Census tracts with a poverty rate of 40 percent or more had 2 017, 513 persons nearly three- fourths of whom were S, Bureau of the Census , Census of Population: 1970 Subject ReNegro, U

6, This was the finding of a six- year study directed by Lawrence B, Cohen of the Department of Industrial Engineering of Columbia University and reported in the

New York Times December 16, 1965,

7, J, R, Meyer, J, F, Kain, and M, Wohl,

, 1965), p, 359,

Harvard University Press 8, John Kain How to Improve Urban Transportation at Practically No Cost, Public Policy, 20 (Summer 1972):352, Italics are in the original. 9, Arnold J, Meltsner titles his contribution to a collection of essays " Local Revenue: A Political Problem, " He explains: " Officials are sometimes reluctant to raise taxes because they believe that taxes have reached a political limit, How do you know , Mr. Mayor , that the property tax has reached a political limit? Answer: I do not know; Ijust feel it, A political limit is a fuzzy constraint, perhaps fictitious, that local officials worry about, but have difficulty predicting, Even social scientists cannot tell when a political limit is about to be reached, " In John p, Crecine , ed" Financing the Metropolis Urban Affairs Annual Reviews, vol. 4 (Beverly Hills, Calif, : Sage Publications, 1970), p, 108,

In 1973 a survey of 30 cities with " serious financial problems locate any cities in which conditions were such that timely action by local,

City Financial Emergencies: The Intergovernmental Dimension,

ton, D, c., U, S. Government Printing Office, July 1973), p. 4.

13. In

(Washing-

Government versus Suburban Auton-

omy, " in Kenneth T, Jackson and Stanley K. Schultz , eds" Cities in American History (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1972), pp, 446 and 456,

St. Louis, New Orleans, and Chicago- contain a total of sixteen areas, all of at least 15, 000 population and five of more than 100, 000, that are exclusively (more than 94 percent) Negro (New York: Harper & Row, 1965), table, p, 25. 14, Commission on Population Growth and the American Future Population (Washington, D, : U, S, Government Printing and the American Future Office, 1972), p, 74, 15. Kenneth B, Clark, " The Wonder Is There Have Been So Few Riots, New York Times Magazine,

(Washington , D, c.:

U, S,

by Bennett Harrison,

Wilson, ed"

19.

Government Printing Office , 1969), foot- .

vides data for the low- income areas of the 50 largest cities using figures from the decennial census (a 15 percent sample) and defining a lowincome area to consist of all census tracts in which 20 percent or more of all persons were below the poverty line in 1969, On this basis , there were 10, 9 18 persons in the poverty areas, 60 percent of whom were Negro, The 555, median family income was $6, 099; 27 percent of the families were below the pov-

erty line and 22 percent had i-neomes poverty standard. About one- third of

at least three times greater than the the families in the low- income areas

paid rents of less than 20 percent of their income; however , of the renters

Urban RenewaL' The Record and the Controversy

(Cambridge,

Mass, : M, I.T. Press , 1966), Urban Renewal and A merican Scott Greer,

(Indianapolis: BobbsCities Merrill, 1965), p, 3, As William G, Grigsby has pointed out, the " flight to the suburbs, " which most renewal projects in central cities have been intended to stop or reverse, undesirable from that of the central city, " It is not understood that. , , exodus

C/!nsus of Population: 1970 , Employment Profiles of Selected Low- Income Areas Final Report PHC(3)-I, United States Summary- Urban Areas (January 1972). The low- income areas were defined by

lowest quartile were defined as " low income, " In 1970 the boundaries so established were re-examined by the Census in consultation with local planning and other officials; in most instances areas were enlarged somewhat. A Census report (distributed after the text of this book was in type) pro,

(February 1971), P. 47, quoted (Baltimore:

Education, Training and the Urban Ghetto

may be a good thing from the standpoint of the society as a whole even if

Bureau of the Census,

the Census Bureau in the middle 1960 S for the use ofOEO and Model Cities agencies, The following (equally weighted) criteria were used: family income below $3, 000 , children in broken homes, persons with low educational attainments, males in unskilled jobs , and substandard housing, Census tracts in the

trans, by Henry Reeve (New

The Johns Hopkins University Press , 1972), p. 167, 18. Cf, Robert C. Weaver, " Class , Race and Urban Renewal Land Economics 36 (August 1960): 235- 251. On urban renewal in general, see James Q,

note p, 29,

12, U, S,

September 5, 1965, p. 10.

16. Alexis de Tocqueville Democracy in America, York: Alfred A, Knopf, 1945), I: 289-290, 17. George Grier, " Washington, City Magazine

I I, Final Report of the National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence

Kenneth B. Clark presents 1960 Census data showing that

Dark Ghetto,

eight cities - New York, Los Angeles, Baltimore , Washington, Cleveland,

failed to

or in a few cases, State officials could not avert or promptly relieve a financial emergency, " Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations

10. Kenneth T. Jackson, " Metropolitan

ports, Final Report PC(2)- 9B, Low- Income Areas in Large Cities.

The Urban Transportation Problem

(Cambridge, Mass, :

295

NOTES FOR CHAPTER I

20.

from the city has produced a much higher standard of housing than could otherwise have been attained, and that the market forces that produced this shift should, therefore , be stimulated, Housing Markets and Public Policy (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1963), p, 333. The President's Fourth Annual Report on National Housing Goals 92dCongress, 2d Session, House Document No. 92- 319, June 29, 1972. The report includes a table (p. 48) showing the revenue costfor 197 I by gross income class,

This and another form of concealed subsidy (the non inclusion of imputed net rent in gross income reported for tax purposes) are discussed by Henry J, Shelter and Subsidies: Who Benefitsfrom Federal Housing Policies? Aaron, (Washington, D, c.: The Brookings Institution , 1972), ch, 4, 21. Stanley S, Surrey, Professor of Law , Harvard University, in U, S, Congress,

Senate, Subcommittee on Priorities and Economy in Government of the Hearings , The Economics of Federal Subsidy

Joint Economic Committee,

22,

Programs 92d Congress , 1St Session, January 13, 14, and 17, 1972, p. 45. The President's Fourth Annual Report p, 32. The report goes on to add: While housing programs have contributed to these problems and in many cause cases intensified them , it is important to emphasize that they did not them, The causes stem from the complex interaction of population migration,

296 I THE

UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED

NOTES FOR CHAPTER 2 I 297

CHAPTER 2

community attitudes and prejudices, consumer preferences, local govern-

mental fragmentation, and the impact of other federal programs such as urban renewal and the highway programs,

23, Richard Muth, " The Urban Economy and Public Problems, " in John p, Financing the Metropolis, Crecine, ed" p. 454, See also Muth' s book, Cities (Chicago:

and Housing, The Spatial Pattern of Urban Residential Land Use

94,

University of Chicago Press, 1969), pp, 319-322, 24, Theodore W, Schultz,

Economic

Crises

in World Agriculture

University of Michigan Press, 1965), p, 25, Karl E, and Alma F, Taeuber, ' The Negro as an Immigrant Trends in Racial and Ethnic Segregation in Chicago, Sociology,

(Ann Arbor:

Recent I

American 10urnal of

69 (January 1964): 382.

Economics and Urban Problems: Diagnosis and Prescriptions'

(New York: Basic Books, 1970), p, 2

Reassessment of the Effect of Family (New York: Basic Books, 1972), pp, 141- 142, 3 I. Andrew M, Greeley and Paul B. Sheatsley, " Attitudes Toward Racial Inte225 (December 1971): 13 and 15, gration Scientific American, Thomas F, Pettigrew has found that " white attitudes toward open housing have become increasingly more favorable over the past generation, " See his paper on " Attitudes on Race and Housing: A Social- Psychological View " in in Residential Areas AmosH, Hawley and Vincent p, Rock, eds" Se2regation

30, Christopher Jencks et aI., and Schooling in America

Inequality,

Academy of Sciences, 1973), pp, 21- 84, See in the City Race (Boston: Little also Joel D, Aberbach and Jack L. Walker, Brown and Company, 1973), which presents data on attitudes of blacks and

(Washington, D, c.: National

whites in Detroit in surveys made in 1967 and 197 I, (New York: eds" State of the Nation Universal Books, 1973), p, 80, Leader February 17, 1964, pp, 33, Irving Kristol, " The Lower Fifth, " The New 9-10, 3 (March-April 34. Robert Blauner, " Whitewash Over Watts, Trans-action

32. William Watts and Lloyd A, Free ,

1966): 6,

35. Burton A. Weisbrod, " Preventing High- School Dorfman, ed"

36,

Measuring Benefits ofGovemment

c.: The Brookings Institution, 1965), p, Wayland, " Old Problems," p, 67.

Drop-outs, " in Robert (Washington

Investments

(Washington, D. c.:

Health , Education, and Welfare , January 18, 1973),

J,

Kingsbury at the head ofthe chapter is from an vol. article, 33

This chapter owes more to the writings of Raymond Vernon,

Bernard J, Frieden than the footnote references suggest.

in the United I, There is a rich literature of theory about urban form and growth Urban States, For a good summary account of it, see Ralph Thomlinson, Cities (New York: Random , the Social and Spatial Character of

St/'llctllre in urban structure are House , 1969), especially ch, 8, Regional differences Functional Classification

described by Lee Schnore and Hal Winsborough, " and the Residential Location of Social Classes," in Brian Berry, ed" City (New York: Wiley, 1972), Classification Handbook For a good general treatment of the development of the AmericanGeogracity in and Immigrants: the nineteenth century, see David Ward, Cities (New York: Oxford UniverAmerica Century in Nineteenth phy

of Change

sity Press, 197 I),

Examine into the Condition of 2, " Report of the Select Committee Appointed to " transmitted to the Legislature Tenant Houses in New York and Brooklyn, 12, Excerpts of this report appear in March 9, 1857 (Albany, N, City, merican The Glaab,

), pp, 11Jr.,

3, Joel Arthur Tan, in A, B, Callow,

ed"

American Urban

p, 13 (New I.Brunswick, N,

York: Oxford University Press, 1969), p, and Immigrants

4, Ward, Cities

Urbanization of America 5, Blake McKelvey, The gers University Press, 1963), pp, 78-79, See also Glaab, The Streetcar Suburbs p, 178; and Sam B, Warner, Jr"

S,

Department of

: RutCity, (Cambridge, Mass, : HarAmerican

vard University Press and M, I.T. Press, 1962), (Chicago: University of Chicago

6, Richard C. Wade ,

Urban Frontier

The

Press, Phoenix Books, 1964), p, 307,

7. In Philadelphia the outward movement was proportionately greater The between Modern 1860 and 1910 than between 1900 and 1950 (Hans Blumenfeld, " 213, September 1965: 67), For an account Scientific American Metropolis, not that of the ideal type of Philadelphia s early pattern of growth, which was Private .City (Philadelphia: described in the text, see Sam B, Warner, Jr., The

8, Edward Crapsey,

Report on

History (New

205,

University of Pennsylvania Press, 1968),Newch,

I 18,

Responsibility and Responsiveness (II),

37, Elliot L. Richardson, the HEW Potentialfor the Seventies

The quotation from F,

The Tendency of Man to Live in Cities, 10ul'llal of Social Science The American (November 1895), The article is excerpted in Charles N, Glaab, 1963)' (Homewood, Ill.: Dorsey Press, Documentary History City:

0hn F, Kain, and

Group:

26, Executive Office of the President, Domestic Council Report on National S, Government Printing Office , 1972), I Growth 1972 (Washington, D, 27, Irving Hoch, " Income and City Size, Urban Studies, 9 (1972): 320, 28, Peter A. Morrison The Impact and Significance of Rural- Urban Migration in the United States (Santa Monica, Calif, : The Rand Corporation, #P- 4752 March 1972), p, 2, 29, Dick Netzer,

The Logic of Metropolitan Growth

The

Side of

Nether

Company, 1872), p, 9,

Light to the

1966), p, 91.

York

(New York: Sheldon and

City (Boston: Beacon Press,

9, Quoted in J, Leslie Dunstan, A 10, Quoted by Thomas Sowell,

Race and Economics

forthcoming 1974), ch. 7, I I. Mabel L. Walker,

Urban Blight and

versity Press, 1938), pp, 18- 2 I,

(New York: David McKay,

Slums (Cambridge, Mass, :

Harvard Uni-

" "

NOTES FOR CHAPTER 2 / 299

298 / THE UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED

In London the course of development was strikingly similar. I am indebted

to Mr. David L. Lloyd, Jr, for calling my attention to the following from R, C. K. Ensor, England 1870-1914 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1936, pp,

509-510): " , , , , changes in urban transportation had an almost instant effecI on housing, They enabled people to live farther from the centres, Soon after 1900 a building boom sprang up on the outskirts of towns and continued until 1910, The resulting movement of population was really a great social phenomenon, Seen in nearly all towns, it benefited the largest most, and London most of all, , , , , The effect on the congested slums of east, south and north London was like the draining of marshes, It is true that the movement went by layers , and when Poplar transferred to East Ham, Walworth went to Wandsworth, or North Camberwell to Lewisham, the places left vacant might be filled from more central and crowded areas; true also, that the new houses (except those built by municipalities or trusts) took the best-off and not the neediest workers, 12, Reynolds Farley, " Suburban Persistence, " in John Kramer, ed" North A merican Suburbs: Politics , Diversity and Change (Berkeley, Calif, : Glendessary Press, 1972), p, 83,

13, Constance McLaughlin Green

The Rise of Urban America (New York: Harper & Row, 1965), pp, 132-133, 14, Davis McEntire Residence and Race (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1960), pp, 300-301. FHA discriminated against Negroes until well into

in effect

the Truman administration, Afterward it discriminated against them

by insisting on very low-risk loans, 15, Gilbert Osofsky,

Harlem: The Making of a Ghetto

(New York: Harper &

Row, 1963), p, 128, 16, Edith Elmer Wood Slums and Blighted Areas in the US" Administration of Public Works , Housing Division Bulletin Number I (Washington, D, : U, Government Printing Office, 1935), p, 19, 17, For an account offederal policy at this time see Roger Starr, The Living End: The City and Its Critics (New York: Coward- McCann , Inc" 1966), especially ch, 18, It has been estimated that in the first half of the 1960decade net out-migration of blacks from the South was about 172, 000 second halfabout 100, 000 annually,

19,

persons annually and in the

threatened by underlying conditions of chronic over-supply, Urban Affairs Quarterly,

Poverty,

8 (September

1972): 79; 20, McEntire,

Residence and Race

21. Raymond Vernon,

Metropolis

ch, 3,

1985 (Cambridge, Mass, :

Harvard University

Press, 1960), p, 141. 22, Herbert J, Gans,

The Levit/owners

Financing the Metropolis

TheoReviews, vol. 4 (Berkeley, Calif, : Sage Publications, 1970), p, 443, andJournal

dore Droettboom et aI., " Urban

Violence and Residential Mobility,"

of the A merican Institute of Planners

(September 197 I): 3 I 9-325,

Julius Margolis has pointed out to the writer that real estate promoters have often played, and often still play, a major part in these movements, The case of Bedford- Stuyvesant illustrates his point. Stuyvesant Heights was a fashionable neighborhood until, with the Depression, many of theThey big brownmoved stones became too much for their original owners to maintain, " Negro out and the prices dropped until the houses were within reach of t make the mortgage payments on their families, And the families who couldn own incomes were encouraged by brokers and the lack of any zoning ordinances or regulations to subdivide the beautiful old brownstones' developed into small apartments, Bedford- Stuyvesant is the place where ' blockbusting into a fine art. Any time there was any possibility of stabilization, real estate men would spur on the process of change by paying Negroes to stage brawls s mail conon street corners to frighten white residents, Nearly every day tained postcards reading, ' we have a buyer for your house.' " Fred C, Shapiro 1964 (New York: Thomas y, Race Riots , New York and James W, Sullivan, Crowell Company, 1964), p, 109, 23, In the Mountain and Pacific states, where the city s growth was shaped largely by the automobile , the inner parts of the city have not been industrialized and

the growing middle class has not been under the same pressure move housing,toConseoutward to find places to build newer and more spacious grey " areas that are so

quently there are not the vast stretches of dilapidated " characteristic of the older cities that were settled in pre- automotive days, See Frederick Wirt, Benjamin Walter, Francine Rabinowitz, and Deborah HenOn the City s Rim (Lexington, Mass, : D, C. Heath, 1972), pp, 29-30, sler, Shelter and Subsidies: Who Benefitsfrom Federal Housing 24, Henry J, Aaron, ch, 2, (Washington, D, c.: The Brookings Institution, 1972), Policies? " a term used by the DepartSubstandard, ch, 10, " Cities and Housing, 25, Muth, ment of Housing and Urban Development , includes dilapidated housing

together with sound housing that lacks specified plumbing facilities, In 1966, cause they only

nearly 70 percent of substandard units were so classified

John F, Kain and Robert Schafer, " Income Maintenance , Migration, and Regional Growth, Public Policy, 20 (Spring 1972): 22 I, See Richard Muth, Cities and Housing, The Spatial Pattern of Urban Residential Land Use (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969), " One is tempted to argue " writes Raymond E, Zelder, that , far from their being a vast scarcity of " satisfactory " housing for low- income families in the past decade almost the reverse is the case; that is , the low- income market has been Housing, and Market Processes,"

Public Problems," in 32, See also Richard Muth, " The Urban Economy and Urban Affairs Annual

John p, Crecine, ed"

(New York: Pantheon Books, 1967), p,

be.

lacked certain plumbing facilities, Most plumbing deficiencies are in"farm deteriorating, and and rural, not urban, areas, however, " Dilapidated," " sound" are terms used by the Census to indicate the number and seriousness slight," " critical," etc, )

matters, see Aaron,

of housing defects, For a convenient account of these

Shelter and Subsidies

ch, 2,

26, Ibid" pp, 25 and 35,

Needs for 27, Frank S, Kristof, ' The I 970Census of Housing: Does It Meet Data Conference, Housing Programs and Policy?, " paper presented to Annual p, I I,

American Institute of Planners, San Francisco, Calif" October 25, 197 I, and 28, On the problem of abandonment see George S, Sternlieb, " Abandonment Housing Rehabilitation: What Is to Be Done?, " in George S, Sternlieb, ed" Frederick E, 1970-197 I (New York: AMS Press, 1972), pp, 62- 1 19, See also (New York: Praeger, Case , ed" Inner- City Housing and Private Enterprise 1972), especially pp, 110-1 I 1.

300 / THE UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED

NOTES FOR CHAPTER 2 / 301

29, See the chapter on technological change by Boris Yavitz in Eli Ginsburg aI.,

Manpower Strategy for the Metropolis

Press, 1968), especially pp, 49-55,

41. Harrison,

(New York: Columbia University

Education ,

Training, and the Urban Ghetto,

42, See Yavitz, in Ginsburg et aI.,

Manpower Strategy,

footnote p, 206, pp, 58-61,

Ibid" p, 59, 30, For data on employment trends from 1950 to 1967 in I I large central cities 43, 44, George Sternlieb, ' The City as Sandbox, The Public Interest 25 (Fall 197 I): and productivity growth by central city and suburban ring from 1947 to 14- 2 I. in 30 large metropolitan areas , see Alexander Ganz and Thomas O' 1963 Brien, 45, Irving Hoch, " Rent, Transportation and Urban Scale " Paper prepared for The City: Sandbox, Reservation, or Dynamo?" Public Policy, 2 I (Winter Symposium on Urban Growth and Development, sponsored by Washington 1973), pp, 107Operations Research Council and the Urban Institute (Washington, D,

123,

The 1970 Census found that in the 1960 S the number of central city jobs

April 17, 1973),

increased from 23 to 25 million (8%) while the number in the suburban rings increased from 20 to 29 million (3 1%), In the 30 metropolitan areas with

46, Peter A, Morrison, States

populations of more than I million , there was an aggregate increase of 1,

million central city jobs and 4, 5 suburban ones from 1960 to 1968, Census of Population, Vol. I, Part 1, General Social and Economic Characteristics , U, S,

Summary, June 1972, Table 101. 3 I. Jeffrey L. Pressman and Aaron Wildavsky,

versityofCalifornia , 1973), p, 151.

32, This view is strenuously advanced by Anthony Downs,

Implementation

Opening Up the Sub-

employment dropped sharply in most of the large central cities in the 1960 The data, however, are based on a one percent sample and are unreliable for other reasons as well. For a view similar to Downs , see John F, Kain, " Distribution and Movement of Jobs and Industry, " in James Q, Wilson The , ed" The Metropolitan Enigma (Cambridge , Mass, : Harvard University Press 1968),

33, Stanley H, Masters, ' The E ffect of Housing Segregation on Black- White Income Differentials " Research Discussion Paper 13472, Institute for Research on Poverty, University of Wisconsin , Madison, 1972, 34, Bennett Harrison, Education , Training, and the Urban Ghetto (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1972), pp, 107 and 116, 35, Peter A. Morrison, ' The Effects of Spatial Redistribution, Dimensions of the Population Problem in the United States (Santa Monica, Calif, : The Rand Corporation, Monograph R- 864- CPG, August 1972), Table 12, p, 30,

36,

The Manpower Report of the President

ment Printing Office , March 1973), p, 73,

37, U, S,

"

(Berkeley, Uni-

urbs, An Urban Strategy for Amerim (New Haven: Yale University Press I 973), Downs presents Census data (pp, 20-2 I) purporting to show that

(Washington, D, c., U, S,

Govern-

Bureau of the Census Current Population Reports Series P-23, No, 37

(1971), 38. Norman M, Bradburn , Seymour Sudman, and Galen L. Gookel Side by Side Integrated Neighborhoods in America (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1971), p, 56, The estimates are based on NORC interviews conducted in 1967 with a national probability sample of about 4, 000 households, 39, According to Philip H, Finch, ' The most blatant discrimination has been all but eliminated; the more subtle methods are now under attack, LowIncome Housing in the Suburbs: The Problem of Exclusionary Zoning, University of Florida Law Review 24 (Fall 197 I): 86, 40, Raymond Vernon .c.The Myth and Reality of Our Urban Problems (Cambridge , Mass, : Harvard University Press , 1962), p, 33,

Dimensio/ls

()f

the Population Problem

in

the United

(Santa Monica, Calif, (The Rand Corporation, Monograph R- 864CPG, August 1972), p, vii, and Urban Growth , New Cities , and the " Population Problem (Santa Monica, Calif, : The Rand Corporation, Monograph

47,

4515-1, 1970), pp, 17 and 24, For other criticism of the new towns idea (Februsee William Alonzo, " What Are New Towns For?, Urban Studies Cities New Communities , and Growth ary 1970), and Harvey A. Garn, New (Washington, D, c.: Urban Institute, March 1970), Paper No, Centers 113- 30, October 16, 1972, York Times, New

48, Glaab,

The American City,

p, I I,

49. Ibid, Other measures proposed by the committee were regulations to ensure easy egress from tenements in case of fire, prevention of prostitution and incest by requiring a sufficient number of rooms per family and by prohibiting subletting, and prevention of drunkenness " by providing for every man a clean and comfortable home" (p, 3), 50, Code enforcement and rent control, along with apprehension about civil disorder, are held responsible for decreases in land values in Harlem in the last ten years, Because of vigorous enforcement of the building code, many buildings are vacant and have been vandalized, (New

York Times,

April 28,

1968,

51. Before the arrival of the Irish, Oscar Handlin remarks with reference to " (By Boston, " the rigid labor supply had made industrialization impossible,

rigid" he presumably means one that demanded and got relatively high

wages, ) And the Irish, he adds, could not have been housed without cellar (Boston s Immigrants rev, ed" Cambridge , Mass, : Harvard University holes, Press, 1959, pp, 82, 110,

in Great Cities (New The Poor York: Scribner s, 1895), p, 88, 53, William T, Elsing, " Life in New York Tenement Houses as Seen by a City Missionary, " in The Poor in Great Cities p. 76, (New in A merican Cities The Housing of the Poor 54, Marcus T. Reynolds, York: American Economic Association, March and May 1893), p. 109, vol. XV (Washington, Reports of the Industrial Commission Immigration, 55, c.: U, S, Government Printing Office , 1901), p. 491. 56, Morris Eagle, ' The Puerto Ricans in New York City, " in Nathan Glazer and (Berkeley: Davis McEntire , eds" Studies in Housing and Minority Groups

52, Jacob A, Riis, in Robert A. Woods et aI.,

University of California Press, 1960), p, 176,

NOTES FOR CHAPTER 3 / 303

302 / THE UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED

sition, namely, that individuals and cultures have differing

CHAPTER 3

orientations

toward the future, is of this character; so are many subsidiary propositions, such as that present-oriented persons tend to be in constant sensual of of the main implications search gratifications, Some propositions, however, are

The I mperatives of Class

proposition; they are themselves deductive but they have arrivedtheat statefrom " support databeen premises that have been inductively established, No "

The quotation at the head of the chapter is from John Dollard Caste and Class (Garden City, N, : Anchor Books, 1957), p, 433, The original edition was published in 1937,

ment that present-oriented persons are unconcerned about the meaningof welfare of

in a Southern Town

I, Adna F, Weber,

The Growth of Cities in the Nineteenth Cenlllry

(New York:

Macmillan, 1899), p, 469,

their grandchildren yet unborn; such a statement follows from the

present,orien tedness,

Census of Population: 1970 , Employment Profiles" of Selected Low- Income Areas Final Report PHC(3)-I, United States Summary- Urban Areas (January 1972), Table I.

2, U, S, Bureau of the Census,

defines a slum as " a thickly populated neighOxford English Dictionary borhood or district where the houses and conditions of life are of a squalid and wretched character. " Squalor is defined as " a combination of misery and (New York: The Free Press, 1962), p, 309, dirt, " In The Urban Villagers Herbert J, Gans says that slums are residential districts that " have been harmful to their residents or proven to be physically, socially, or emotionally Poverty to the larger community " (italics in the original), Robert Hunter, in

3, The

4,

(New York: HarperTorchbooks, 1965), p, 108 , considers it a " great injustice to use the word to refer " to working- class districts or to poverty-stricken districts relatively free from vice, Lee Rainwater, " The Problem of Lower- Class Culture and Poverty- War (New On Understanding Poverty Strategy, " in Daniel p, Moynihan, ed" York: Basic Books, 1969), p, 241.

5, For a critical review of some of the literature on " time

perspective " by a

Psy, psychologist, see Vernon L. Allen s essay in the volume edited by him: (Chicago: Markham Publishing Company, 1970), Theodore R, Sarbin writes approvingly of some of the same concepts in the same volume , pp, 32- 35, See also S, M, Miller , Frank Riessman, and Arthur A. Seagull, " Poverty and Self- Indulgence: A Critique of the NonDeferred Gratification Pattern, " in Louis A. Ferman et aI., eds" Poverty in (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, America: A Book of Readings

chological Factors in Poverty

1963),

The concept " time preference " as used in economics was developed largely

by Irving Fisher in his

The Theory of Interest

Company, 1930), He drew upon an 1834 republished in 1905 under the title,

(New York: The Macmillan

work by John Rae ,

which was

The Sociological Theory of Capital,

6, An ideal type " is a freely created mental construct, , , by means of which an attempt is made to ' order ' reality by isolating, accentuating, and articulating the elements of a recurrent social phenomenon, , , into an internally consistent system of relationships, " Julius Gould and William L. Kolb, eds"

UNESCO Dictionary of the Social Sciences

(New York: The Free Press,

1964), p, 312,

Most of the statements about time horizons in what follows have some empirical foundation: they employ a ~ewhat special terminology to report facts that have been observed by social scientists and others, The main propo-

The Conditions of Educational I), pp, Committee for Economic Development, 197 Elmtown 35, 36, and 65, For a representative example of a sociological study based upon the " cultural transmission" theory, see A, B, Hollingshead, (New York: Wiley, 1949)' Youth Tally s Comer (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1967), p, Elliot Liebow, p, 208, 223, For Liebow s critique of the " cultural" approach, see his footnote The Rela-

7, Jerome S, Bruner, in Sterling McMurrin, ed" (N ew York: Opporlllnity

8,

For statements of positions similar to his, see Louis Kriesburg, " and Behavior, Social Problems tionship Between Socio, Economic Rank Mothers in Poverty: A Study of Fathers book, (1963): 334-353; Kriesburg essays by (Chicago: Aldine Publishing Company, 1970); and the less Families On UnderHerbert J, Gans and Lee Rainwater in Daniel p, Moynihan, ed"

(New York, Basic Books, 1969), For a powerful critique of in the Moynihan volume, this approach, see the essay by Walter B, M iller Tally s Cornel', p, 66, passage

standing Poverty

9, Liebow,

10, This presumably is what Liebow means"when the greater theoryheiswrites " , , , of(inmuch quoted above) that the " social machinery (Emphasis added), The socioloimportance

for the possibility of change,

gist S, M, Miller has been more explicit: " as (Frank) Riessman has

It is perhaps a ' heuristic fallacy,'

said, to believe that lower- class people are willing

, but if professionals and capable of positive change, This is not always true accomplished' and social reformers lack confidence in the poor, little can be either in the social services or in political action, An optimistic outlook may not insure success, but without optimism, it is doubtful if anything can be moved, Frequently, disenchantment and cynicism capture accurately a slice of life , but they are also immobilizing, for they ignore the constructive and

The American Lower Class: A Typological Approach, Social Research 31 (Spring 1964), pp, 20, 21. I I, From a methodological standpoint, the theory advanced here has some simi(Homewood, Ill, Class and Conformity energizing role of hope,

larity to that of Melvin L. Kohn,

Dorsey Press, 1969), Kohn explains the dependent variable (life style) by an intervening one (sense of efficacy) which in turn he explains by the independent one ("the cumulative effects of educational training and occupational " in a stereotype experience ), He dismisses the concept of time horizon as a " footnote (p, 104), " The essence of higher class position is the expectation that one s decisions and actions can be consequential; the essence of lower class position is the beliefthat one is at the mercy "of(p, forces and people beyond one 189)' control, often, beyond one s understanding 12, The relation between social class and IQ is a worldwide phenomenon with the correlation between socioeconomic status of parents and IQ of children being

,"

304

THE UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED

305

NOTES FOR CHAPTER 3

most frequently in the region of 0, 35 to 0-40, When school children are

grown up with family portraits: a line stretching back to the 16th century, and

range of one or two standard deviations (fifteen to thirty IQ points), Arthur

which he hoped would stretch for many generations after he was dead, A family was a line in which the generations he knew, long as they were , were only a very small part in which his achievement was one among a long

grouped by socioeconomic status, the mean IQ' s of the groups vary over a Jensen,

Genetics and Education

(New York: Harper & Row , 1972), p, 153,

13. For bibliographies of descriptive accounts of the various classes see Jack Roach, Llewellyn Gross, and Orville Gurslin, Social Stratification in the

succession,

His concern for the posterity of the human race should be seen in the context of this sense of family posterity: of generations stretching out far

(Englewood Cliffs, N. : Prentice- Hall, Inc" 1969), ch, 4, Forthe lower class , see in addition an elaborate review article by Zahava D, Blum and Peter H, Rossi which appears as an appendix in Daniel P. Moynihan, ed" United States

On Understanding Poverty.

beyond his knowledge, " Conrad (London)

Russell, " Memories of My Father,"

Sunday Times Magazine May 14, 1972.

The works that were drawn upon most heavily in 18. For data on the voting behavior of various income and ethnic groups on local

The Urban public expenditure issues, see J, Q, Wilson and E, C, Banfield, " PublicVillagers ch. I I; Walter B, Miller, " Implications of Urban Lower- Class CuI. A merican Political Regardingness as a Value Premise in Voting Behavior," ture for Social Work, Social Service Review 33 (September 1959), PP, Science Review 58 (December 1964): 876-887, For data on participation in 219-236 and " Lower Class Culture as a Generating Milieu of Gang Delinorganizations, see Murray Hausknecht The Joiners: A Sociological Descripquency," Journal of Social Issues 14 (1968), pp, 5- 19; A. B, Hollingshead, (Totowa, N. : Bedminster Press, tion of Voluntary Association Membership Elmtown s Youth; Allison Davis, " The Motivation of the Underprivileged 1962). Worker," in William Foote Whyte , ed" Industry and Society (New York: Knopf, Vintage Books, 1941), (New York:., 19, W, J, Cash The Mind of the South McGraw- Hili, 1946); William Foote Whyte Street Corner Society, 2d ed, 80, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press , 1955); Mirra Komarovsky, Blue. 20. Cf, Basil Bernstein s description ofthe British working class, " Some SociologCo//arMarriage (New York: Vintage Books, 1967); A. B. Shostak and Wilvol. 9 (1958): British Journal of Sociology, ical Determinants of Perception," liam Gomberg, Blue- Collar World: Studies of the A merican Worker (Englewood Cliffs, N, : Prentice- Hall, Inc" 1965); AlbertK. Cohen and Harold M, The specific character of long- term goals tends to be replaced by more Hodges, Jr. Characteristics of the Lower- Blue- Collar Class," general notions of the future , in which' chance , a friend or a relative Social Problems 10 (Spring 1963), pp, 305- 334; Lee Rainwater, plays a greater part than the rigorous working out of connections, Thus Behind Ghello Walls (Chicago: Aldine Publishing Company, 1970); S, M, Miller and Frank Riesspresent, or near present , activities have greater value than the relation mas, ' T/'Ie Working Class Subculture: A New View," of the present activity to the attainment of a distant goal. The system of Social Problems (Summer 1961): 86-97, and Peter Binzen, expectancies, or the time-span of anticipation , is shortened and this Whitetown USA (New York: Vinconstructing the summaries in the text include HerbertJ, Gans,

:I)

tage Books, 1970), See also Albert K, Cohen,

creates different sets of preferences, goals and dissatisfactions, This environment limits the perception of the developing child of and in time, Present gratifications or present deprivations become absolute

Delinquent Boys: The Culture

(Glencoe , Ill.: The Free Press ofGlencoe, 1955), and Herman H, Hyman, ' The Value Systems of Different Classes, " in Reinhard Bendix and Seymour Martin Lipset , eds" Class, Status and Power 2d ed, (New York: The of the Gang

gratifications or absolute deprivations for there exists no developed time continuum upon which present activity can be ranged, Relative to the middle- classes, the postponement of present pleasure for future grat-

Free Press, 1966).

14, Melvin L. Kohn, " Social

Class and Parental Values,"

American Journal of

ifications will be found difficult. By implication a more volatile pat-

64 (January 1959): 340, 344, 350, See also his " Social Class and Parent-Child Relationships: An Interpretation," A merican Journal of Sociology, 68 (January 1963): 475, Sociology,

The Young Radicals (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1968), p. 265. Keniston s observation was made with respect to the upper middle class. 16. This should help to explain the often-noted similarity between the life style of some of " high society" and that of the lower class. See , for example , the remarks of J. A. Hobson on " a lower leisure class whose valuations and ways of living form a most instructive parody of the upper leisure class" in Work and Wealth (New York: Macmillan, 1926), pp, 155- 156, For an argument that " present-centeredness " is a " moral ideal," see the essay by Claudio Naranjo in Joan Fagan and Irma Lee Sheperd, eds. Gestalt Therapy Now (Palo Alto, Calif. : Science & Behavior Books, 1970), especially pp. 49-50, 17. " To him (Bertrand Russell), a family did not only mean the people who lived under the same roof: that was what he meant by the Victorian phrase ' people.' ' My family ' meant something it can mean only to those who have

terning of affectual and expressive behaviour will be found in the working- classes,

15. Kenneth Keniston,

21. David Riesman (in collaboration with Nathan Glazer),

22,

Faces

in

the Crowd,

abr. ed, (New Haven: Yale University Press , 1965), p, 254, Family Design: Marital Sexuality, Family According to Lee Rainwater, in (Chicago: Aldine Publishing Company, 1965), p, 55, Size , and Contraception in the " upper- lower class" (the working class as defined here):

Though husband and wife may not go their separate ways as much as in the lower- lower class , they tend to adhere to a sharper division of labor than is true in the lower-middle class, and though they may partic-

ipate together in many family activities, this seems to be more the result of default (they are thrown together in the same small home) or of a desire to keep away from unwelcome involvements outside the home than to be dictated by the values of equality and togetherness that dominate the thinking of lower-middle class men and women,

306 / THE UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED

NOTES FOR CHAPTER 3

23, Altho~gh Goffman s " rom ~ntic division of the world "

cuts across class lin

37, Timothy L. Smith, " there IS no doubt on which side the lower class IS to be found, Ervin tieth- Century America,'

Goffman , in " Where the Action Is (International Ritual Garden City, N, Anchor Books

307

aches t o th~ Histor~ of I mmigration in Twenv: Appro A mencan Hlstoncal Review 71 (July 1966), 1?74' Boston s Immigran~s ~ev, ed, ~~ambndge,

, 1967, p, 268), says: Mass, : Harvard University Press, 1959), p, 51. (Hallcs In the orIgInal) (New York: ScrIbner s, , 38, Quoted by Oscar Handlin in

Looking for where th~ action is, one arrives at a romantic division of 39, In8 Robert the world, On the o ~e slde are th~ safe and silent places, t~e home , the

welI-regulated role In ?u s~ness, Industry, and the p:ofesslOns; on the

0, ~t ~gh

?th~r , are alI those , actIvities that generate expressIOn, requiring the Indl vldual to, lay hImself or: the line, and place himself in)eopardy I. durIng a passIng ?loment. !t IS fr~m this co r:trast that we fashu:)O nearly, 4

~2Thernstrom,

Cenwry City

The POOl' in Great Cities

103'Poverty and Progress; Social t:tobility ill a Nineteenth

A Woods et al.

(Cambridge, Mass, :

Harvard UniversIty Press, 1964),

pp, 103,

Matza The Disreputable Poor," in Bendix and Lipset, eds" Class , and Power p, 645, In a later version of this essay (Robert K, Merton Status al~ o ';lr commercial fantasies, It IS from this contrast that delinquents, crImInals, hustlers, and sportsmen draw their self-respect. , , , and Robert Nisbet , eds" Contemporary Social Problems 3d ed" New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc" I 97 I, p, 632) the words " rela~ivelY lo:-ver 24, Herman H, Hyman, " The Value Systems of Different Classes," p, 488, " have been replaced with " limited 25, Coh~n and Hodges Characteristics of the Lower- Blue- ColIar Class," p, 187 intelIigence, more emotional problems opportunities for steady employ~e 26, Damel Rosenblatt and Edward Suchman quoted by Anselm L. Strauss i 42, shlngton, Reports of the Industrial COml1llSSlOn , Il1l1n1gratlon vol. XV ~Wa Where Medicine Fails (Chicago: Aldine Publishing Company, 1970), p, 18, D, c.: U, S, Government Printing Office, 1901), p, 480, On ethr:l~ differences 27, Eleanor Pavenstedt, " A Comparison of the Child Rearing Environment 0 relating to mobility, see Bernard C. ~ose Race.' Ethmclty, and the Upper Lower and Very Low- Lower Class Families," A merican Journal A merican SocIOlogical Review 24 ( I 95?): 47- 60, Achievement Syndrome," Orthopsychiatry, After citing some similar figures for the year 1878, Mose~ RISC hlr: goes on 28, Marc Fried, " Social , Differences in Mental Health, " in John Kosa , Aaron to say that by the early years of the twentieth century Je~lsh cnml nals , the ~tonovsky : and IrvIng Zola , eds" Poverty and Health , A Sociological Ana/, The Americanized offspring of immigrants, were regularly makIng headlines, ysls(C?ambndge Mass, : Harvard University Press, 1969), p, 113, (New York: Harper Torchs Jews , 1870-1914 Promised City, New York' 29, On ~hls and on lower- class culture , see the articles by Walter B, Miller book, 1970), pp, 89 and 90, ~I~id

r:t."

35 (1965): 89-98,

earlier.

30, Jerome K. Myers and B, H, Roberts, Illness

p, ~46,

p, 34,

3 I. Gans,

227,

43, WilIiam Alonso, " The Historic and the Structural Theor~es of Urban Form, Land Economics 40 (May 1964): Their Implications for Urban Renewal,"

F.

Family and Class Dynamics in Mental

(~ew Y ~rk: Wiley, 1959), p, 174, See also A. B, HolIingshead and Social Class and Mental Illness y (May COl1l1nen~(f/ (New York: Wiley, 1958), p, 175, 44, James Q, Wilson, in " A Guide to Reagan Country, M inuchin et a\., Families of the Slums (New York: Basic Books I, has described vividly the car ~ tha ~, his gen~ratlO ~, of Los 1967), pp, 40-4 Angeles boys lavished on their cars, " After ma rnage , he continues, ~evotThe Urban VI~lagers ing energy to theimprovementofa h ouse wa~ simply a grown-up extensIOn of

C, Redlich, and S,

cited

, 1968),

32, Ralph Barton Perry In

Puntal1lsm and Democracy

(New York: Vanguard,

what, as ajuvenile, one had done with cars, 1944), p, 298, remar~,s of the Engli~h and colonial American yeomen, arti, ~t amo ~g suburbanites In ItS sample I4 45, In 1972 a national polI found th sans, and tradesmen: They were neither so unfortunate as to be imbued with happy, 25 percent th ~t they w ~uld be percent said that they would be a sense of helplessness" nor so privileged as to be satisfied with their present " unhappy," 57 percent that it would " not make , ~ch difference , and 4 status, They pos ~essedJust enough to whet their appetites for more and to that they " don t know " whether t? have slmllar-stat~s, blacks move confident of their power to attai!) it." percent into their communities, The corresponding figures fo: ,additIOn of lower-

feel

33, Theodore Sedgwick

2: 376, 220, person (New York: Harper and status

Public and Private Economy

43, 203,

Brothers, 1836), part I, p, 8, See also T, C. Grattan,

(Lon~on: Bradbury and Evans , 1859), 34, Cf, RIchard C?' Wade The Urban Frontier Press, ~hoemx Books, 1964), pp, 21735, J, Leslie Dunstan,

41-

A Light to the City

Civilized America

(Chicago: University of Chicago Universe Books, 1973), . p, 102, In general I?olIs hav ~ shown th~t the hl ~her a

(Boston: Beacon Press, 1966),

pp, 202-

s socioeconomic status, the more likely he IS to favor ln~egratlOr: of housing, transportation, and schools, as welI as other form ~ ?f integration, See Paul B. Sheatsley, " White Attitudes Toward the Negro, In Talcott Parsons and Kenneth B, Clark, eds" The Negro A l11erican (Boston: Houghton

Sani, Mifflin, 1966), p, 315,

Civilized A merica I: 98-99, See also Lemuel Shattuck et a\. " tary Evils of Foreign Emigr~tion Report of the Sanitary Col11l11i;sion oj Massachusetts, 1850 (Cambndge , Mass, : Harvard University Press, 1948),

36, Grattan,

whites were: 10, 46, 42, and 2, and for the a~dltlon of lower-status

blacks (these replies included some black suburbanItes): 8, 46 , 43, and 3, (New York: WilIiam Watts and Lloyd A. Free, eds" State of the Nation

A study of social class and voting behavIOr In Little Rock fo,:nd, The higher the social class, the stronger was support for desegregation, Con-

1966,

NOTES FOR CHAPTER 4 / 309

308 / THE UNHEAVENL Y CITY REVISITED

(New York: Dark Ghetto: Dilemmas of Social Power versely, the lower the social class, the greater was support for segregation, L Kenneth B, Clark, Harlan Hahn, L. Michael Ross, and Thomas F. Pettigrew, unpublished pape . Harper & Row, 1965), p, I I, (New York, David McKay, forthcomRace and Economics ,'2. Thomas Sowell,

~ork ing- Clas.\" SIIIJI h: Stlldy of All to Workers;: ing 1974), ch, 7, (Berkeley: University of CalIforn ~a Press , 1960), ch, 5, 3. On similarities and differences between the present p~ospecto~t~e Negro ~nd 0 nllCS op. CIL " also IrVIng ~ace and

1966), i ,

46, Cf, Ben~ett M, Berger SlIbllrhla

47, Marshall B, ClInard

SllIms and Commlllllty De\'elopment: Experiment

(New York: The Free Press, R, Se eley, ' The Slum: Its Nature , Use and Users, JolIl'l1al (~f Jo?n ~r/ can Instltllte of Plann ~rs 25 (February 1959): 10-13,

Self- Help

r,JIl

that of immigrants see Sowell,

Kristol " The

1959).

Yo~k

Negro Today Is Like the Immigrant Yesterday, New

an~ EthnIC September I I, 19?~; Nat han Glazer, " Blac~s~oclal Iii Times Magazine, 48, Cf, hob Groups: The Difference and the polI~lcal Difference It Makes, (Cambndge, Mass.. The Newcomers Spanish Harlem; natomy of Po\'erty (New Yor lems, 18 (Spring 197 I); Oscar HandlIn, 49, PatrIcia Cayo Sexton, Harper & Row Harvard University Press, clL See he probl~m of estimating the size of the classes from these and other data : 4, On the success of the Japanese , see Sowell, Race and Economics, ?,P. 50,

, 1965), p, I 16,

discussed In the Appendix, : Rut

51. Blake ~cKe~vey,

The Urbanization of AmeriCil

(New Brunswick, N,

also William Peterson, " Success Story, Japanese- Amencan Style, In Nathan

Glazer, ed. Cities in Trollhle

(Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1970).

gers Unlver ~~ty Press , 1963), p, 94; Jane Addams, " An Effort Toward Soci 5. On the basis of extensive data, Hershberg concludes that the paupenzatlOn ~f The Fo/'1lm 15 (October 1892): 228, Philadelphia s black population was the consequence n?t of the slave expenDemocracy, Darkness and Daylight; or , Lights and Shadows 52, Mrs, Helen ~ampbell, ence (91 percent of the city s antebellum black popl!latlOn was freeborn) but New York Life (Hartford, Conn. : Hartford Publishing 1896), p, 170, Co" rather of racism and inequality experienced in the city. Theodore Hershberg, b~ut~lity in general, see Richard O' Connor, Hell's Kitchen (Philadelphi~ " Free Blacks in Antebellum Philadelphia: A StU?y of Ex- Sl~ves, Freeborn ;-72): and Socioeconomic Decline JolIl'l1al of Social History, 5 (WInter 1971 had InterEdllCiltion and Income (New York: Viking, 196 I), p ' 183- 209. For support of his contention that the slave- born ,N~gro Fogel 53, PatrICia Cayo Sexton, and ~t WIiham , nalized the ethic of deferred gratification, see Robe mer/can Negro Time on the Cross: The Economics of 54, Consider , for example, the , probable meaning to all concerned of Stanley L. Engerman, announcement (New York T"l1es July 13, 1966) by New York City s chie (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1973), Slavery NOI :th health officer, Dr. Howard J, Brown , that thousands of wooden On the position offreedmen in the North, see also Leon F, Llt~ack, woul d be bur~t in " a pub~ic decl~r ~tio? of conscience " as symbols of dehu, , (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961); on the rIse of racial of Slavery The Strang~ C?reer of manIze d medical services In the city s clinIcs, That the service provided by the . prejudice and discrimination, C, .van~ Woodward, aspIratIOns ~nd cIty to ItS poor was remarkably good by any standard except that of the more (New York: Oxford UnIversity Press, 1955); on the and Fore lgn Jim Crow afflue ~~ middle class ('-,No hospital in the world has better professional handicaps of urban Negroes, Timothy L. S mith, " Native Bl~cks talent, Dr. Bro~n admitted) was a fact obscured by the announcement (" Whites: Varying Responses to EducatIOnal OpportunIty In Amenca, 6 (1972): 309-335. graceful" , patients" , have to barter their dignity for their health" ). Thai 1880-1950, " in Perspectives in American History, people sat on benches rather than in chairs and waited without appointments 6. I am indebted to Professor Andrew Hacker for suggestIng the word comuntil ~ doctor could se e ,them was not, until t he rise of new class standards parable, ov~r-sll~phfied here, For a made It so, an, affront; It IS, therefore factually Incorrect to use the benches 7, The methodological problem has been vastl~ se~ H" Blal?c~: symbols of mIstreatment III the past, The effect of the announcement technical discussion of the problem of multIcollInearIty, ever , must have been to make upper-middle- and upper- class people ashamed " Correlated Independent Variables: The Problem of MultIcollIneanty, of a ~ity which has long treated its poor so shabbily and also to tell the poor' Social Forces 42 (1963), pp, 233e~say' by Otis that If ~y any chance they thought they were fortunate in being cared for For a sophisticated treatment of the concrete problem, see the On Unders~andlllg Poverty professIOnals as good as any in the world they were being outrageously put Dudley Duncan in Daniel p, Moynihan, ed" , Blau, ~nd

200, ,

LIP~lI~cott, 1958),

the

benchel

dis'

237,

as , how,

by

been (New York: Basic Books, the three major background varIables -:-

upon and that they should be ~ggrieved and angry at not always having given the deference and amenities that the middle class now gives to itself,

1969), ch. 4, See also t~e findIng of

Duncan that when "

education, and career beginnings

Race: Thinking May Make It So The quotation at the head of the chapter is from

X (New York: Grove , 1966), p. 344,

socla! OrIgInS,

the resl~ua~ dlffer nce

o~. -c: between white and nonwhite men living in the regIOn " -:- IS only 4. 3 pOInts III

CHAPTER 4

colm

" are controlled,

The

IItohiography of Mal-

thelr birth

undoubtedly, . , in large part due to discrimination The the North and 10, 7 in the South. Peter M, Blau and OtiS Dudley Duncan, (New York: Wiley.' 1967) , p. ~,z Am~r/can I, See ~Iso merican Occupational St/'1lctllre James Gwartney, " Discrimination and Income Differentials, 1970): 396--4 08; Orl~y Ashenfelter ~~d Mlc~ael Economic Review 60 (June mer/can Taussig, " Discrimination and Income Differentials: Comment, A

Economic Review

Reply, " same issue,

61 (September 197 I): 746--750, and James Gwartney,

8, Pascal K, Whelpton, Arthur A, Campbell, and John E, Patterson Fertility and Family Planning in the United States

sity Press, 1966), pp, 342- 348, 9, James S, Coleman et aI.,

3II

NOTES FOR CHAPTER 4

3 10 / THE UNHEA VENL Y CITY REVISITED

(Princeton, N, : Princeton Univer,

Equality of Educational Opportunity,

Office 01

Education, U, S,

Department of Health , Education, and Welfare (Washing, ton, D, c.: U, S, Government Printing Office , 1966), pp, 454- 456, 10, Robert I. Lerman, " Some Determinants of Youth School Activity, lou/'llal

of Human Resources 7 (Summer 1972): 377, I I. Harry J, Gilman, " Economic Discrimination and Unemployment, American Economic Review 55 (December 1965): 1077- 1095, The data Gilman analyzed were for 1950 and 1957- 1961.

Studies of

unreported

crime suggest that the association of crime with both Martin

race and income may be less than appears from official(Belmont, statistics, Calif,

Gold,

Delinquent Behal'ior

in

l/II A merican City

Brooks/Cole Publishing Company, 1970), 16, Studies comparing Negro and white children from the lowest socioeconomic stratum have stressed the relative lack of persistence of the Negroes when confronted with a task: a " what does it matter " attitude presumably revealing

low need of achievement. See, for example, the authorities cited by Urie

Psychological Factors in Poverty Bronfenbrenner in Vernon L. Allen, ed" (Chicago: Markham Publishing Company, 1970), p, 212, Culture, Class,

Numerous useful cautions are offered by Hylan Lewis in Arthur " " in M, Ross and Family Life Among Low- Income Urban Negroes, (New York: Harand Herbert Hill, eds" Employment , Race , and Poverty court, Brace & World, Inc" 1967), ch, 6, 12, Richard Muth, Cities and Housing, The Spatial Pattern of Urban Residential Personality: Why Isn t More Land Use (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969), p, 280, Kain and 17, See Thomas F, Pettigrew, " Negro American 20 (April 1964): 4- 23, The lournal of Social Issues Known?, Quigley found that in St. Louis Negroes were substantially less likely to Negro find reason to doubt that such a thing as Rohrer and Edmonson " homeowners than whites of similar characteristics, Acknowledging that the personality ' exists at all. Despite the unquestioned fact that differences of a difference may be due to a greater taste for ownership on the part of whites or statistical order between whites as a group and Negroes as a group are well to whites' greater wealth, they believe housing market discrimination to be established in a variety of connections, there is no basis for assuming that the most plausible explanation, Extending their analysis to eighteen metropolas such even when the durable patterns of behavior are related to racial status itan areas, they find that in 1960 family size and income accounted for only, emotional implications of the caste system and related stereotyped attitudes about one- third of the difference between black and white ownership rates, or prejudices are included in the social definition of race, " John H, Rohrer the remainder being attributable to " other factors, " especially (presumably) (New and Munro S, Edmonson, eds" The Eighth Generation Grows Up discrimination, To whatever extent it exists, they remark, discrimination 1964), p, 77, (Italics in the originaL) York: Harper Torchbooks, prevents Negroes from getting the tax advantages that go to homeowners and On the other hand, Lesser and associates have found that while class subit also robs them of a hedge against inflation available to others, A family level of certain mental abilities in absolute culture markedly influences the prevented in 1950 from buying a home would by 1970 , they estimate, have level of development of relative children, ethnic subculture determines the had out-of- pocket housing costs more than double those it would have had Mental Abilities of these abilities, G, S, Lesser, G, Fifer, and D, H, Clark, otherwise, John F, Kajn and John M, Quigley, " Housing Market DiscriminaSociety for Class and Cuill/ral Groups Children from Different Socialtion, Homeownership, and Savings Behavior, A merican Economic Review 102, vol. 30, no, 4 (Chicago: Research in Child Development, Serial No, 62 (June 1972): 263- 277, University of Chicago Press, 1965), 13, Katherine Anthony, " Mothers Who Must Earn, " in West Side Sll/dies RusBlacks and Whites , An Experiment in Social Indicators 18, Michael J, Flax, sell Sage Foundation (New York: Survey Associates, 1914), p, 20, 197 I), (Washington, D, c.: The Urban Institute, 14, Otho G, Cartwright, " Boyhood and Lawlessness, " in West Side Sll/dies A Test of 19, Barry R, Chiswick, " Racial Discrimination in the Labor Market: 8 I (November

156, 55,

15, An elaborate study of all boys born in 1945 who lived in Philadelphia at least

from their tenth to their eighteenth birthdays found that , when low socio-

economic status was held constant, Negro boys were three times more likely than whites to be chronic offenders, Marvin E, Wolfgang, Robert M, Figlio and Thorsten Sellin, Delinquency in a Birth Cohort (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1972), p, 91. A study of arrest rates in Detroit, however, lends no credence to the explanation of the Negro-white crime rate differential in terms of some distinctive aspect of Negro culture or in terms of racial conflict. , , , " Edward Green, " Race , Social Status, and Criminal Arrest American Soci.ological Review 35 (June 1970): 476--750, The Detroit study found no indication of discrimination by the police in making arrests; neither did one made in Philadelphia..-by Frank Cannavale and Robert Silverman under the direction of Marvin E, Wolfgang, (This unpublished work was kindly made available to the author by Professor Wolfgang,

Alternative Hypotheses,

loumal of Political Economy,

1973),

20, Albert Wohlstetter and Sinclair Coleman, " Race Differences in Income, (Lexington, " in

Anthony H, Pascal, ed"

Racial Discrimination

in

Economic Life

Mass, : D, C. Heath and Company, 1972), pp, 68-69, Elmtown s Yolllh (New York: Wiley, 1949),

pp, 114,

21. A, B. Hollingshead,

113, 119, 147,

282, III.

22, Ibid" pp, 110- 1 I I.

23, Ibid" pp, 147, 113, 119-120, 116, 117, 331. 24, Thomas R, Brooks, " New York' s Finest Commentary 3 I.

25, Angus Campbell and Howard Schuman, can Cities

1968),

Racial Altitudes

47 (August 1965): in

Fifteen Ameri-

(Ann Arbor: Survey Research Center , University of Michigan,

,'

NOTES FOR CHAPTER 4

312 / THE UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED

Side by Side: 41. Urie Bronfenbrenner, " The Psychological Costs (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 197 Education, Child Del'Clopmellt 38 (1967): 910,

26, Norman Bradburn, Seymour Sudman, and Galen L. Gookel, Illtegrated Neigllhorlloods ill A merica

313

of Quality and Equality in

Black Progress and Liberal 55 (April 1973): p, 43. Rhetoric, Commelltary, may, in its (August 1965): 14, H, Erikson has called attention to the danger that a majority " 28, Malcolm Muggeridge points out that calling a place like Harlem a " ghetto " i 43, Erik sudden zeal to regain its moral position and to face the facts squarely, inada perfect example of the kind of falsification of words to make them serve the minority s negative image of itself and this in the collfirm vertently tend to on the majority political ends that Orwell deplored in his essay " Politics vs, Literature,'. very act of dwelling exclusively and even self- indulgently The Negro American eds" According to Muggeridge By equating Negro slums with a ghetto, on the, " Talcott Parsons and Kenneth B, Clark, sins, one hand white racialism in itself bad enough in all conscience (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1966), p, 238, (Italics in the originaL) associated with the additional horrors of Nazi anti- Semitism. On the other 44, Morris Eagle, ' The Puerto Ricans in New York City, " in Nathan Glazer and (Berkeley: the white bourgeois champion of the Negro can see his wrongs in terms Davis McEntire , eds" Studies ill Housing and Minority Groups p, 134,

27, Cf, Karl E. Taeuber, " Residential Segregation,

Scielltific Americall

pogroms and other distant and remote wickednesses,

rather than of

nearby!

and present social and economic inequalities, " Letter to the editor of the Ned York Times Magazille May 5, 1968, 29, Cited in Anthony H, Pascal The Analysis of Residential Segregation, " in

John p, Crecine, ed"

33, Ibid" p, 69. The Urball ViI/agel's

(New York: The Free Press, 1962),

20.

Racialllltegratioll ill A mai(Chicago: National Opinion Research Center, 1970), 36, Ralph Ellison, in " Federal Role in Urban Affairs, " Hearings Before the Subcommittee on Executive Reorganization , Committee on Government Operations , August 30, 1966, U, S, Senate, 89th Congress, 2d Session, Part 5, P' 35, N, M, Bradburn, S, Sudman, and G. L. Gookel, call Neighborhoods

1155. 37, Gerald D, Suttles,

The Social Order of the Slum

Chicago Press, 1968), p. 129. 38, Clark,

39, 40,

Dark Ghello

University of California Press, 1960), pp, 166, 164,

CHAPTER 5

Finallcillg tile Metropolis Urban Affairs Annual

Reviews, vol. 4 (Beverly Hills, Calif, : Sage Publications, 1970), p. 41 I. 30, Nathan Kantrowitz, " Ethnic and Racial Segregation in the New York Metropolis, 1960, A mericall 10u/'l1al of Sociology, 74 (May 1969): 693, 3 I. Thomas C. Schelling, " On the Ecology of M icromotives, Tile Public Intel" est 25 (Fall 1971): 88, Tile Middle- Illcome Negro Family Faces Urball Re32, Lewis G, Watts et aI., lIewal Research Center of the Florence Heller Graduate School for Advanced Studies in Social Welfare (Waltham, Mass. : Brandeis University, 1964). Similar findings for New York are reported in Oscar Handlin Tile Newcomers 92 and Appendix, 34, Herbert J, Gans,

42, Ben J, Wattenberg and Richard M, Scammon, "

(Chicago: University of

Wilfred G. Marston, " Socioeconomic Differentiation within Negro Areas of American Cities, Social Forces 48 (December 1969): 165- 176, New York Times September 16 , 1965, The point had been made the year before by two reporters who wrote a book about the New York riots, One reason why crime in the ghetto had not been cleaned up, Shapiro and Sullivan wrote, " is that integration in the city has progressed to the point where it is

easier for a Negro leader to switch neighborhoods than fight. Most Bedford-

Stuyvesant leaders .live in integrated Crown Heights, Most Harlem leaders pack up at the end of the day and head for Queens or Westchester. " Fred C. Shapiro and James W, Sullivan,

Youth in the Ghetto, " the source of the first quotation at the head of the chapter, was published (in multilith) by HARYOU (Harlem Youth Opportunities is from James R, Dumpson and Unlimited, Inc, ) in 1964, The second quotation " held by the appears in the transcript of a symposium, " The Future by Design, 130), New York City Planning Commission in October 1964 (p, (New York: The Rise of Urban America I. Constance McLaughlin Green,

Harper & Row, 1965), p, 179,

Race Riot: New York

1964 (New York:

(Cam1963), p. 39,

Beyond the Melting Pot

2, Nathan Glazer and Daniel Patrick Moynihan,

bridge, Mass, : M.IT, Press and Harvard University Press, (New York: Vintage Books, 1962), p, Growing Up Absurd

3, Paul Goodman,

32.

Populatioll Trends and Prospectsfor the , 1960 to

172,

4, Donald Bogue and D, p, Dandekar,

Chicago- Northwestem Indialla Collsolidated Metropolitan Area 1990

(Chicago: Population Research and Training Center, March 1962), p,

34,

A Profile of/he Negro American

5, Thomas F, Pettigrew,

Nostrand, 1964), p.

p, 25,

Crowell, 1964), p, 196,

The Problem of Unemployment

(Princeton, N, : Van , eds"

Irving Kenneth Zola 6, John Kosa, in Kosa , Aaron Antonovsky, and(Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard PO1'

erty and Health

, A Sociological Allalysis

University Press, 1969), p, 28, " in Benjamin Labor Market Perspectives of the New: City, 7, A. R, Weber, " Prentice- Hall, Inc" (Englewood Cliffs, N, City and Suburb Chinitz, ed" Spectrum Book, 1964), pp, 6&-69, New York Review of Books 8, Daniel Bell, " The Bogey of Automation, August 26, 1965, p, 24, Technology and Unemployment, The Public Interest 9, Robert M, Solow, " (Fall 1965): 1&-19, (Italics in the originaL) 91 (December 1968): 36. Monthly Labor Review, 10, " in Talcott I I. J ames Tobin, " On I mproving the Economic Status of the Negro,

. "

,"

NOTES FOR CHAPTER 5

THE UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED

314

&'

~~~: ~~~

ton Mifflin, 1966), p, 462, '

315

~956) ~ p, .239, ew York' I ' New York University Pr~ss, est categories of low- paYIng Jobs (janIto!s, The earnings of those l~ the ~rg sales personnel in food and dairy 12, Finis Welch Relationships between Income and Schooling, " unpublish 6, attendants in auto servlc~ an h lar I ~~nd retail trade) usually excee~ the paper dated March 1973, p. 24, (He cites, inter alia , his " Education in Prod , product stores, laborers m w ~f ~wo weeks of full- time work, Lau~le ~;

Parsons and Kenneth B. Clark, eds"

tion,

in the United States

k'

, 1970: 35- 59, ) See also Stanley, minimum wage of $2, 600 for ~or~ The r Characteristics and OccupatIOns, Cummings, " The Em plOyed p ; 65) with Pohcy Recommendations vle w, (New York: Praeger, 1972), pp, 66, 102 , a Monthly La~or R C;, (Wm te~ 1,966), 5, , (~ ~ 6ebate, Chicago Today 104" UnJOI 7. George J, Stigler, T~e , on the drugstore soda fountaIn IS IllustraDale L. Hiestand, Economic Growth and Employment Opportunities fi mlnImu ~a e The effect of the February 6, 1968, p, 1) only 30 al tlee aU! mantles ew York: Columbia UnIversity Press, 1964), pp, 116 , 56--57, The Wa tive, Accor mg 0 fountaIns no , and Journal of Political Economy,

~iedlan?er,

13.

(Boston: Hou .

The Negro A merican

: 82&-835,

Unemployment in the Urban Core: An Analysis of Thirty Citl

14, Cf. Report of the National Commission on Technology, . conomlc Progress

r:e they could not afford to pay so aJer soft the foun 23, c. , reason for scrappmg ~~~~ er to install self-service ice cream and ,

(Washingto the number ec I

: U, S, Government Printing Office , February 1966), I: 21Manpower Report of the President March 1973 (Washington, D,

15.

The

16,

Technology and the A merican Economy,

res m, th United States have ercent of the 52, 000 drugsto

Automation an

p, 23.p, 16, Technology and the American Economy

S, Government Printing Office), p. 17,

ggl ts cited the minimum wage as the

early orne ru

' ks the

minimum, Others said It was h ~~~m P , ' urn

drink machines, Pr~su~ab~y, t e

ager. ,

JerkIng IS (or

wage is one reason why machInes rate was) typically ajob for the teen-

are cheaper. Soda17, Ibid" I d eGeorgeJ, Stigler, TheEconomlcs 18, These changes are discussed by Martin S, Feldstein in ' The Economics ofth vo ~e For the economiC theo~y m 3~ ,(June Economic Review, ' Am seerican New Unemployment, The Public Interest 33 (Fall 1973), pp, 3\lO 42, See al of Minimum Wage Leglsla The Effect of Statutory MInImum his Lowering the Permanent Rate of Unemployment A Joint Committe 1946): 35&-365, See also Ya e roze 0 a les The Journal of Law and EcoPrint of the Joint Economic Committee (Washington, Government Printin Wage nem ~t'yment Increases ~n Teen- Age U ~~2' ~ technical treatment, see The Office , 1973), The latter contains comments by Professors R, A. Gordon 109nomics Ii (AprIl ~9~9), Ie ~n imum Wage Rate; Who Really Pays? Bennett Harrison, Charles C. Holt , Hyman B. Kaitz , and Frank C, Pierson. Free Society AssociatIOn, Inc" (Washington, D, Milton Friedman I 9, This was proposed by Professor William Fellner in a paper written before hi A n Interview with Yale Brazen an nomination to the Council of Economic Advisers, See his essay in the volum e along with other matters discussed by Ph illip Cagan a ~s, A New Loo~ at Inf!ation (Washington, D, For disc~ssions of th~ , mlnIm r:d othe The Common Sen , of political ~d, ~~:S:e AmerIcan EnterprIse Institute for PublIc PolIcy Research , 1973), in this sectIOn, see PhilIp H, 1933)- on minImum wages 166--167, d Ke Routledge an , an Paul, EC'Onomy(London: ublic employees, 1: 343, See also 20, Q~oted in ,Parsons and Clark, eds" over n , The Negro American (Belmont and unions, 2: ~93- 695, o University Economics 21. MIIt ~m FrIedman, ' The Role of Monetary Policy, American Economic lha Armen A, Alchmn and .wI 1964), ch, 28. ' ny ' Review 58 (March 1968): 7- 1 I; reprinted in Friedman, The Optimum QuanCalif, : Wadsworth Publ lshmgs omp ~er ' 1971 p, 89, Black youths ar~ not the tity of Money and Other Essays (Chicago: Aldine Publishing Company, Nation s Busmess IS much : 28, Quoted in X~~~Ugh thei~ unemployment rate only ones affected, of ,course, h 22, Martin S, Feldstein Lowering the Permanent Rate of Unemployment, 972 seventy-eight percent of all unemhigher than that of white ~out s, m 1 also the article by William Fellner (footnote , 1 6--1 8, ed teenagers were white. e in the Incom 23, The Fair Labor Standards Act of June 25, 1938, also known as the Wages and an , Black CommunIty, :, m ployment ornla, ?S 29, Andrew F, BrImmer re Presented at the University ofCahl Hour Act , 52 Stat. 1060 as amended; the Walsh- Healey Public Contracts Act Trends and Outlook, Lectu the Administration proposed an Increase of June 30, 1936 49 Stat. 2036, as amended , 41 U, C, 35b~1I 45, The Walsh- Angeles, March 2, 197,3, In

April 1966),

1969),

Healey Act

pp, 45&-459,

See

regulates hours and wages on federal contracts exceeding the minimum wage Wlt~

, e a I~l3

ntial for young workers, However, the

grounds that " percent, did notcontal~ by 38 theminimum $10 000. It has not been effective as a minimum-wage law, See Herbert C. ' passed by Congress, which ra~se~~h it would deny opportunIon Morton, Public Contracts and Private Wages (Washington D, c.: The Brook- this provision and was vetoe and " would give an enormouS er wor e oun ties to uns I ~ ~, September 6, 1973, k yo!m 24. Workers covered by the $ 1.60 federal minimum must receive time- boost New Y or to inflation. review of the literature are: Bureau of and-one- half pay after forty hours a week, Certain classes of workers The works cited by B~immer m 1 0)' pp 897-902, Thomas Gale Moore, became subject to the act under 1966 amendments (e, g" those employed by Labor Statistics, ~lletlf1 ~::~~;'e ~na ~e Unemployment Rate~, Journal large hotels, motels, or restaurants , or laundries, hospitals, and schools). " The EffectsofMmlmumW gust 1971); Masanore Ha~hlmoto and received $ I, I 5 in 1968 , which was raised by 15 cents a year until they reached li/A 79 N atlO n~1 Bureau of Political EconomY" $ 1.60 in 1971. Somef:'lrm workers on larger farms must be paid $ 1. 1 5. Jacob Mincer, The N BE ~II ; of Research into Poverty, g' and Marvin Kosters and FInIS Welch, 25, Quoted by Robert H, Bremner, From the Depths: The Discovery of Poverty

mgs InstitutIOn, 1965), pp, 125-126,

who

of Economic Research, ort comm

, ",", ", ,

316 / THE UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED

NOTES FOR CHAPTER 5 I 317

The Effects of Minimum Wages by Race , Sex , and Age

ed. Racial Discrimination and Company, 1972),

in

Economic Life

" in Anthony Pascal

(Lexington, Mass, :

D, C. Heath

See also Douglas K. Adie, " Teen- Age Unemployment and Real Federal loumal of Political Economy, 81 (March/April 1973), pp, 435-44I. For a contrary view see Michael C, Lovell, " The Minimum Wage , Teenage Unemployment, and the Business Cycle Western Economic Minimum Wages

loumal IO (December 1972): pp, 414- 427, 30, Martin S, Feldstein,

Lowering the Permanent Rate of Unemployment,

31, Peter B, Doeringer and Michael J, Piore Internal Labor Markets and Manpower Analysis (Lexington, Mass, : Heath Lexington Books, 197 I), p, 139. 32, Walter Gellhorn, quoted by Milton Friedman,

Capitalism and Freedom

(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962), p, 142, 33, Proposed by the New York City License Commissioner

(New York Times October 9, 1967), Under this proposal , the city, with a federal subsidy, would

34,

also train apprentices, Thus, entry into the occupations would be even further limited, Boston Globe March 21, 1965, A study is reported to have that although Negro woman toll collectors scored significantly lowershown on mental ability tests than did their white counterparts, they received identical ratings from their supervisors for their performance on the job, The interpretation placed on this finding was that the tests were discriminatory, Another possi-

bility, however, is that mental ability has little to do with (New York Times January 21, 1968), New York Times June 21, 1965, New York Times August I I , 1968. 36, 37, HARYOU, " Youth in the Ghetto, " pp, 16-17, collecting

successful toll

35,

38, Goodman,

Growing Up Absurd,

39, Cf. Bennett Harrison,

Training and the Urban Ghetto

Johns Hopkins Press, 1972), p, 92,

(Baltimore,

the low- income areas of 5 I of the largest cities found that the median lowest acceptable pay figure given by black males aged 16-21 and not in school was $83 per week; for whites the comparable figure was $84, For males with seven or less years of schooling, the median of the figures given by blacks was higher than that given by

40, The 1971 Census report on

$92, For male family $108,

whites- $ 102 as against heads , the median for the races was the same

Employment Profiles of Selected Low- Income

30 a and b, 4I. Gloria

Areas

op, cit. Tables

Shaw Hamilton and J. David Roessner, " How Employers Screen

Disadvantaged Job Applicants 1972): 14-2I.

Monthly Labor Rel'iew

95 (September

Griggs v, Duke Power Co. 42, S, 849 (1971). 91 43, Christopher Jencks et aI. Inequality, Reassessment of the Effect of Family and Schooling in America (New York: Basic Books, 1972), p, 159,

44, Ibid" p, 193,

45, Thomas Sowell 46,

Race and Economics

ing 1974), ch, 8, New York Times

January 5,

r!r73,

Let s set aside the whole minority problem for a moment and take the

white youngster. I maintain that I can take any young man out of the suburban area of America with his nice washed look and his good speech and his white shirt which he wears comfortably and his polished shoes which look as though they belong on his feet and his well-cut hair and send him out as a tenth- grade dropout and get him ajob without a because of the way he speaks, the bit of trouble. It is a social image way he carries himself, It has nothing to do with whether he can read or do arithmetic or anything else, It has to do with the social problem we are dealing with in the slums, , , , It is his manners, his speech , his way of carrying himself, his own self-confidence, the " neat clean-cut look" Can we put the suburban image on our kids in the slums? I think part of the suburban image is how he fills out a form and how he is able to read instructions, and how he answers the telephone, and what he says when he is asked a question and how he responds. From Hugh Curtis Clark, " The Neighborhood Youth Corps " unpublished senior honors thesis, Harvard University, 1968, p. 52, 49, Hamilton and Roessner, " How Employers Screen Disadvantaged Job Applicants," p, 18.

p. 204,

Education ,

data on 30 large cities, see Alexander Ganz and Thomas O' Brien, ' The City: 21 (Winter 1973), pp, Public Policy, 108-123, See also Victor R, Fuchs The Growing Importance of the Service Industries National Bureau of Economic Research Occasional Paper 96 (New York: National Bureau of Economic Research , 1965), pp, 13- 14, 48, A West Coast personnel officer explained to an interviewer who was asking about job opportunities for " ghetto " youth: Sandbox, Reservation, or Dynamo?,

(New York: David McKay, forthcom-

47, For details on the shift to service activities in I I large cities and aggregate

50, The negative income tax seems first to have been proposed in this connection by George J, Stigler. " (T) here is a great attractiveness," he wrote in the proposal that we extend the personal income tax to the lowest income brack-

ets with negative rates in these brackets, Such a scheme could :;lchieve equalof administrative ity of treatment with what appears to be a (large) minimum

machinery, If the negative rates are appropriately graduated, we may still retain some measure of incentive for a family to increase its income. The Economics of Minimum Wage Legislation," op, cit. , p, 365, 5 I. For a brief description of the several federal manpower programs (" , . , neiSetting ther a disaster nor a roaring success, , . ), see Edward R, Fried et aI., National Priorities: The

1974

Budget

(Washington, D. c.: The Brookings

The Manpower Report of the Presi1973, ch, 2, (Baltimore: The Johns

Institution, 1973), pp, 218-232, See also dent- March

52, Wilbur R, Thompson, A

Preface to Urban Economics

Hopkins University Press , 1965), p. . 1 13' Raymond Vernon, in his study of the New York region, remarks that the informal minimum wage in New York is likely to force the low-wage segments of industry continually to move outward, looking for an environment in 1985 (Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard UniMetropolis which they can survive, versity Press, 1960), p, 5I.

53. John F, Kain and Joseph J, Persky, " Alternatives Public Interest 14 (Winter 1969): 82,

to the Gilded Ghetto,"

The

,"

,"

THE UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED

318

NOTES FOR CHAPTER 6

54, During the hard times of 1857, when starvation was a real possibility for the unemployed , the charitable societies of New York published circulars invit,!

3I9

CHAPTER 6

ing those who would accept work in the country to register. None did, K. H.

Claghorn Report to the Industrial Commission on Immigration

55,

15 (1901): 463, U, S, Bureau of the Census Census of Population: 1970 , Employment Profiles of Selected Low- Income Areas Final Report PHC(3)-I , United States Summary- Urban Areas (January 1972), p. 12, See also Dorothy K. Newman

The Decentralization of Jobs 13,

Monthly Labor Review

90 (May 1967):

56. The theory is developed in MichaelJ, Piore On- theJob Training in a Dual Labor Market " in Arnold R. Weber, et aI., eds. Public- Private Manpower Policies (Madison, Wis" Industrial Relations Research Association, 1969) i and " Manpower Policy, " in Samuel Beer et aI. , eds" The State and the Poor (Boston: Winthrop Publishing Co" 1970), pp, 53 - 83, See also Doeringer and Piore Internal Labor Markets ch, 8 and pp, 204 - 208,

57, Ibid" p, 52, See also Bennett Harrison, Ghetto

Education , Training, and the Urban (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press

130-152, 5'8, Harrison, op, cit., p, 123, 59, Op, cit. , p. 18 I, 60, Op, cit. , p, 208,

, 1972), pp.

61. Ibid" p, 193, See also Harrison

(Washington , D, 62, Ibid" p, 132,

Public Service Jobs for Urban Residents : National Civil Service League , 1969),

Several Kinds of Poverty twenty- two for every I, The dependency ratios (i, e" number of children under four) for poor 100 persons in the " prime working ages, " twenty- two to sixtyStatistical Areas persons living in the central cities of Standard Metropolitan (SMSA' s) of 250, 000 or more population and for poor persons living in, the the entire country were 168 and 148, respectively, in 1966, By contrast dependency ratio of the nonpoor in the central cities was lower than that of I as against 79. Harold L. Sheppard, the non poor in the entire country - 7 (Kalamazoo, Effects of Family Planning on Poverty in the United States Mich. : The W, E, Upjohn Institute for Employment Research, October 1967), pp, 3-4, The Monetary Rewards of Migration Within the 2, Richard F. Wertheimer, II, 1970), p, 26, (Washington, D. c.: The Urban Institute, u.S, Current Population Reports 60, No, 86, " Char3, U, S, Bureau of the Census,

acteristics of the Low- Income

reported some income which they could not account for and which was prewas because they could not hide their any sumably illegal. That they reported consumption of goods from the Census enumerator and gave him a figure they thought consistent with what was visible, In this way a large number of people without any acknowledged source of income reported incomes in the , Friedlander supposes, $4, 000 and above range; a substantial number of these 000 or more, If we assume a lower limit may actually have been earning $10, of $ 5, 000 for the true income of those who could not account for their income and put 20 percent of the population in this group, the illegal income of Hara lower lem would be $150 million or 37. 5 percent of the total. If we assume very low" estilimit of $ 10, 000, it would be $300 million or 75 percent. A " would be

employment in which the first group consists primarily of adults (" with stable but low-wage experience ), Op. cit. , p, 179, Toward the end of his book Bennett Harrison assures the reader that the idea that some persons cannot " make it" because of personal incapacities is one of our most unfortunate national myths, Earlier , however, he has said that it is " incontestable" that secondary labor" is " significantly more unstable, " Op, cit. , pp. 210 and 132. 64. In the article cited above , Gloria Shaw Hamilton reports that public employ-

percent of the population (15, 000 people) at $6, 000-

ers were much more likely to require a high school diploma and a passing score on a test and more likely to reject an employee because of health problems, being overweight, or having an arrest or prison record. p, 20,

1974 Budget p, 92. than limited scale , see Lester Thurow Toward a Definition of Economic Justice The Public Interest

67.

68, 69,

(Spring 1973), especially pp, 79-80, There is an exchange between Richard A. 3I Posner and Thurow in the Fall 1973 issue of the same magazine which touches on the issue, Work in America pp, 174 and 184, Fellner , in Philip Cagan et aI. A New Look at Inflation p. 166, U. S, Congress, Employment a'ld Manpower Problems in the Cities: Implications of the Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, Hearings before the Joint Economic Committee , 90th Congress , 2nd Session, May-June 1968 , p, 66.

: U,

those unemployed or not in the labor force and 18 percent of other workers

63, Op, cit., p, 202, Despite this observation, the authors offer a fiveclassification of the low- income population according to its adaptability fold to primary

65, Cf. Fried et aI., Setting National Priorities: The 66, For an argument in favor of it on a more

Population, 1971 " (Washington, D,

Government Printing Office, 1972). income in Harlem, found that 4, Friedlander, in an effort to estimate illegal one- fifth of the adult population received income in 1965 that was not from work, welfare, gifts, and so forth, His " crude" estimate is that 20 percent of

5,

mate- 10 Unemployment in the $90 million or 22, 5 percent, Stanley L. Friedlander, Urban Core: An Analysis of Thirty Cities with Policy Recommendations (New York: Praeger, 1972), pp, 186--189, House Hearings on the Economic-Opportunity Margaret Reid, testimony in year income Act of 1964, 88th Congress, 2d Session, Part 3, p, 1429. A twoa oneaverage, however, yields nearly as many low- income families as does c.: U. year average,

Economic Report of the President

(Washington, D,

Government Printing Office, 1965), p, 165, Population " in 6, Irving Hoch, " Urban Scale and Environmental Quality, III of task force reports of the Commisvol. Resources , and the Environment, sion on Population Growth and the American Future , Ronald G, Ridker, ed. (1972), pp, 256 and 235, (Washington, Definition and Perspective Poverty 7, Rose D. Friedman, : American Enterprise Institute , February 1965), pp, 34- 35.

" "

NOTES FOR CHAPTER 6 / 321

320 / THE UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED

8, Jacob Riis, " Special Needs of the Poor in New York

The Forum

(Decem-

ber 1892): 493,

9, For an authoritative treatment by an

economist of poverty and inequality

defined in terms of income (as opposed to status, cultural deprivation, or the like), see RobertJ, Lampman, Ends and Means of Reducing Income Poverty (Chicago: Markham Publishing Co., 1972), 10, Quoted (with italics added) in Rose Friedman, II. Quoted by Robert Hunter,

pp, 7-

Poverty

Poverty,

p, 30.

(New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1965),

New York Times story (October 14, 1970) began: " The first results of a Federal study of malnutrition in New York City show that nearly half of a

12, A

sample of low income children under 7 years old suffer from low levels of vitamin A, " Later on in the story it developed: (I) that as between low- and upper- income children age 7- 12 there was only a 2 percent difference in the frequency of vitamin A deficiency; (2) that deficiencies of other nutrients were found in less than 10 percent of the children; (3) that in the case of some nutrients no deficiencies were found; (4) that doctors disagree as to whether any of the deficiencies found constitute " malnutrition (S) that vitamin

deficiencies found have not been linked to any specific symptoms or illness;

and (6) that lack of vitamin A contributes to loss of vision in dim light but doctors do not know how great the deficiency must be to produce this effect. To the extent that ignorance rather than poverty is the cause of bad diets, diets cannot be expected to improve as incomes rise, Leontine Young, in Wednesday s Children: A Study of Child Neglect and Abuse (New York: McGraw- Hill, 1964), p, 123, reports: " Many of the mothers lack the most

elemental knowledge of nutrition as well as the will to act. One mother insisted she fed her children well, She bought potato chips and Coca- Cola

regularly, " With a higher income, this mother might buy more potato chips and Coca- Cola. 13, For a perspective differing somewhat from the one here , see Nathan Glazer, The Paradoxes of Health Care The Public Interest 22 (Winter 1971), pp, 62-77; see also Charles Kadushin, " Social Class and the Experience of III Health, " in Bendix and Lipset , op, cit., pp, 406-412,

14, This paragraph is based entirely on Harold Stephen Luft, " Poverty

and

Health: An Empirical Investigation, " unpublished Ph, D, dissertation, Har-

vard University (July 1972),

IS, Martin S, Feldstein, " The Medical Economy, Scientific American 229 (September 1973), p, IS6, See also Myron J, Lefcowitz, " Poverty and Health: A Re- Examination, Inquiry, 16 (March 1973), pp, 3- 13, This is Reprint 96 in the series of the Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin, 16, Adapted from Charles L. Schultze et aI., Setting National Priorities, the 1973 Budget op, cit., pp, 224- 22S, 17, Julius A. Roth, " The Treatment of the Sick, " in John Kosa , Aaron Antonovsky, and Irving Kenneth Zola , eds" Poverty and Health , A Sociological Analysis (Cambridge, Mass, : Harvard University Press, 1969), p, 223; see also Mary W, Herman, " The "Roor: Their Medical Needs and the Health Services Available to Them Annals of the A merican Academy of Political and Social Science,

399 (January 1972): 12- 21.

18. Irving Leveson, ' The Challenge of Health Services for the Poor, The Annals

399 (January of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 1972): 26, Pointing out that there are consistent findings of a strong impact of education upon health, the author remarks that education , , , extends one time horizon, and behavior may be very different when future consequences of current actions are given increased weight, 19. Richard Auster, Irving Leveson, and Deborah Sarachek, " The Production of 4 (Fall 1969): Health, An Exploratory Study, Journal of Human Resources,

411-436, The analysis is limited to whites, Drawing upon the same data Leveson has shown elsewhere that environmental factors account for about seven- tenths of the differences in infant deaths among (white) income groups and that these estimates " explain " about half the white-nonwhite differential. 7 (June 1970): Irving Leveson, " Determinants ofInfant Mortality, Inquiry, 60-61. A study of infant death in New York City, published by the National Academy of Sciences in 1973, is reported to have found that the infant death rate for the city would be reduced by " as much as " one- third if all women had the pregnancy outcome of those who received adequate health care (away of putting it which ignores the possibility that among the women not receiving adequate care there may be many whose infants would die even if they did receive it). New York Times July 8, 1973. 20. Alonzo S, Yerby, ' The Problems of Medical Care for Indigent Populations, American Journal of Public Health SS (August 1965): 121S,

(Chicago, Where Medicine Fails Aldine PublishIng Co" 1970), p, 39, In an analysis of British experience , Martin Rein writes: " Different occupations both at the top and the bottom of the social scale generate different illness patterns, But this measure of class is not a measure of poverty, Hence redistribution of income among these occupational groups is unlikely to alter this pattern of illness, This leads naturally to the question of what kinds of environmental manipulations are likely to reduce occupational related morbidity, Here we are led to the curious conclusion that it may be easier to alter the morbidity- generating character of the environment of the unskilled than it is to alter the occupational environment of professional and managerial responsiveness to prevention groups, But by this new criterion of severity - we might be forced to conclude that more highly skilled white-collar occupational groups are sicker than unskilled manual groups, We should be hesitant to draw such an inference too quickly, But the example does illusrelationship trate how demanding is the task of reaching ajudgment about the between class and morbidity, " Martin Rein, " Social Class and the Utilization of Medical Care Services, Hospitals , Journal of the American Hospital Association 43 (July 1969): So. (p. 17), " live Where Medicine Fails The poor, writes Anselm L. Strauss in concern strictly and wholeheartedly in the present, , , To them a careful about health is unreal. , , , " Daniel Rosenblatt finds that the relative failure

21, George W, Albee, in AnselmL. Strauss, ed"

of the poor to use the many preventive health services available to them is in some measure " another dimension of the general lack of future orientation for the that characterizes blue collar workers, Barriers to Medical Care New Per-

Urban Poor, "

in Arthur B, Shostak and William Gomberg, eds.,

spectives on Poverty

(Englewood Cliffs , N, J " Prentice- Hall, 1965), pp, 72 -73,

,"

,"

322 / THE UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED

NOTES FOR CHAPTER 6

See also Eric J, Cassell, " Disease as a Way of Life

22, Edward R, Fried etal.

Setting National Priorities: The

55 i

Commentary,

(February 1973), pp, 80-82,

Budget op, cit.,

1974

p, 112,

23, U, S,

Consumer Buying

Bureau of the Census, Current Population Reports,

Indicators, Household Ownership and A vailability of Cars, Homes, and Selected Household Durables and Annual Expenditures on Cars and Other Durables:

1971 (May 1972), Tables 1The Structure of Psychological Well- Being

24, Quoted in N, M, Bradburn,

25,

cago: Aldine Publishing Company, 1969), p, 115, Victor R, Fuchs, " Redefining Poverty and Redistributing Income,

8 (Summer 1967): 91. 26, Edward R. Fried et aI. Setting National Priorities: The ington , D, : The Brookings Institution, 1973), p, 45,

(ChiThe

$3, 000

line for families and the $ 1

1947 and

1974

Budget

(Wash-

1965, poverty (using the

500 one for unrelated individuals) declined

7 percentage points per year (in constant 1965 dollars), If this rate of decline continues, it would take 23 years to eliminate poverty among families and 55 years to eliminate it among unrelated individuals, Lester C, Thurow, Economics of Poverty and Discrimination

(Washington, D,

The : The Brook-

ings Institution, 1969),

Dimensions of the Population Problem in the United States (Santa Monica, Calif, : The Rand Corporation, Monograph R- 864CPG, August 1972), pp, v- vi,

28, Peter A, Morrison,

29, Benjamin A. Okner, Reducing Poverty,

30,

Transfer Payments: Their Distribution and Role in Reprint 254 (Washington, D, c.:

The Brookings Institu-

tion, 1973), A comprehensive account of current welfare programs is provided in Gilbert y, Steiner, The State of Welfare (Washington , D, c.: The Brookings Institution , 197 I); a much briefer one , which emphasizes the, problem of reconciling work incentives with public assistance, is Sar A. Levitan, Martin Rein, and David Marwick, Work Welfare Go Together (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1972), The negative income tax proposal was made in Milton Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962), ch, 12, See also Christopher Green Negative Taxes and the Poverty Problem (Washington, c.: The Brookings Institution, 1967); James Tobin , Joseph A. Pechman, and Peter M, M ieszkowski, " Is

assistance plans on " working poor " families in five cities of New Jersey and Pennsylvania indicated, according to the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, " that only small changes in family earnings should be expected in response to a negative income tax plan, " Only families headed by able- bodied men were New York Times, December 21, 1973, See also U, S, Office of Ecostudied, Preliminary Results of the New Jersey Graduated Work nomic Opportunity, (Washington , D, c.: Government Printing Office, Incentive Experiment 1970),

33, The loss of output in the economy in 1963 attributable to the disincentive effect of the progressive income tax on high incomes (over $ 10 000) " may have been ofthe order of one- third of I percent. " R, Barlow, H, E, Bracer, and

Public Interest,

27, Lester C, Thurow finds that between

323

a Negative Income Tax Practical?"

The Yale

77 (November 1967): 1- 27; and James C. Vadakin A Critique of the Guaranteed Annual Income, The Public Interest I I (Spring 1968): Law Journal

53- 66, 3 I. For a detailed , vivid, and authoritative account of the formulation of the

proposal and the subsequent political struggle , see Daniel p, Moynihan, The Politics of a Guaranteed Income , The Nixon Administration and the Family Assistance Plan (New York: Random House , 1973), 32, Michael K. Taussig, " Long-run Consequences of Income Maintenance " in Kenneth E, Boulding and Martin Pfaff, eds" Redistribution to the Rich and the Poor, The Grants Economics of Income Distribution (Belmont, Calif, Wadsworth Publishing Co mpany;"I972), p, 385, A three- year experiment to test the disincentive effects of eight different

J, N, Morgan,

(Washington, D, c.:

Economic Behavior of the Affluent

The

Brookings Institution, 1966), p, 146, Welfare , Income , and Employment: An Economic 34, Elizabeth F, Durbin, (New York: Praeger, 1969), Analysis of Family Choice 1974 Budget p, 81. Related 35, Fried et aI. Setting National Priorities: The

matters are discussed by Edward C. Banfield, Nathan Glazer, and David The Public Interest 16 (Summer

Gordon in separate articles on welfare in

1969), 48 (Summer 1966): 9, 36, Martin Rein, " Poverty and Income American Child, 37, See Simon Rottenberg, " Misplaced Emphases in Wars on Poverty, Law and (Winter 1966): 68-7 I. Contemporary Problems 38, Glen G, Cain, " Issues in the Economics ofa Population Policy for the United

States, American Economic Review 61 (May 1971): 414,

39, Bruno Stein, 40, David Caplovitz,

On Relief(New

I), pp, 86-87, (New York: The Free Press, 1963),

York: Basic Books, 197

The Poor Pay More

48, 41. Lester C. Thurow The Political Economy of Income Redistribution Policies, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 409 (September 1973), p, 150, Poverty, pp, 322- 323, 43, Cf, David Matza, " The Disreputable Poor " in Neil J.Smelser and Seymour in Economic Development Social Structure and Mobility Martin Lipset, eds" (Chicago: Aldine Publishing Company, 1966), especially pp, 310-317, 44, The distinction is akin to that made by John Kosa between " acute " and chronic" poverty, The former, he says, implies a previous period spent above the poverty level. " The chronically poor person, " on the other hand, " has no personal knowledge of how to live above the poverty level and, if given some unexpected aid from a charity organization, he cannot live up to the expectations; perhaps, , , he has to be taught the rudiments of middle- class life and 42, Hunter,

spending habits, " Chronic poverty, he adds, is self- perpetuating and, unlike acute poverty, preserves all the traits of pauperism, " The Nature of Poverty, in John Kosa, Antonovsky, and Zola, eds"

Poverty and Health

45, From an unpublished paper by Francis Duehay,

46, Cf, L. L. Geismar and Michael

A. LaSorte

p, 27,

Understanding the Multi-

(New York: Association Press , 1964), pp, 56-58, . (Metuchen, N, : The 47, Gordon E, Brown, ed" The Multi- Problem Dilemma Problem Family

Scarecrow Press, 1968), p, 8,

!'

',

""

THE UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED

324

NOTES FOR CHAPTER 6

A Light to the Cit (Boston: Beacon Press , 1966), p, 106, 49, Reverend , Lyman A bbott , IntroductIOn to Mrs, Helen Campbell Darkness and Daylight; or , Ltglils and Shadows of New York Life (Hartford Conn, ~~ford Publishi ?g Co" 1896), p, 53, Th~ secret of success in dea

49),

325

that" , , , the poor ~artici p~t~ less frequently ,than the gen ~r~l population in all

48, J, Leslie Dunstan,

kinds of communIty activIties, And , the white p~~r partIcipate les~ than the black poor. But both black and white poor families tend to perceive themInner. selves as not being a part of the community, " Frederick E, Case, ed" the outcas~ class, Reverend Abbott says, IS " personal contact with men and City Housing and PrI\' ate Enterprise (New York: P~aeger, 1972!, p, 34, , women of higher nature " by which he presumably means higherclass culture 60, Robert A, Berliner, " Alinskism in Theory and Practice, " unpublished senIor (P. honors thesis, Harvard University, 1967, 50, ~oy Lubove The Professional A ltmist (Cambridge, Mass, : Harvard Univer- 61. On Chicago, see Winston Moore, Charles P. Livermore , and ~eorge F, Galland, Jr., " Woodlawn: the Zone of Destruction, The Public Interest 5 I. How far super ~ision can go even with welfare recipients who are not lower (Winter 1973): 48-52 in particular. " class the blmd : ~?r inst~nce is described by Jacobus TenBroek and For discussion of " citizen participation " from a vanety of POlI~tS of VIew Flo ~d W. Matson m

ling with

slty Press, 1965), p, 16,

Review

The Disabled and the Law of Welfare,

California Law

54 (May 1966): 83 I:

and for much bibliography, see Roland L. Warren, ed"

the age nc 0 we are ,

not t e !~Clplent ,

who decides what life

Perspectives on the

2d ed. (Chicago: Rand McNally & Company, 1973),

American Community,

Section Five,

goal~ are to be follo wed , what ambitIOns may be entertained, what

services are appropnate , what wants are to be recognized, and what funds allocated to eac? In sh , the recipient is told what he wants as .ort ~ell as how much he IS wanting. In the velvet glove of public aid is an

CHAPTER 7 Schooling versus Education

Iron hand: If the recipient does not comply and conform, he may be

removed from the rolls or have his budget reduced, The alternatives are

obedience or starvation, 52, Winifred Bell,

Aid to Dependent Children

(New York: Columbia University

Press, 1965), p, 113,

A recent study compares the progress of fifty multiproblem families receiving intensive social casework (the caseworkers had earned the Master of Social Work degree, had previous field experience , and had less than half the usual caseload) with that of a control group of fifty similar families receiving normal public assistance, After thirty-one months " the essential finding was that while the demonstration group attained a slightly better degree of family functioning, its margin of progress over the control group was not significant in the statistical sense. " Brown, The Multi- Problem Dilemma p. 7, 53, Quoted in Harvey W, Zorbaugh The Gold Coast and the Slum University of Chicago Press, 1929), p, 262. (Chicago:

54. There is no standard usage for the terms " community development, community organization," and " community mobilization, " The meanings employed here follow Patricia Cayo Sexton, Spanish Harlem: Anatomy of (New York: Harper & Row , 1965), pp, 140-141. for example , various writings by and about Saul Alinsky, especially the uncritical account of his doings in Charles Silberman, Crisis in Black and White (New York: Random House , 1964), ch, 10. Peter Marris and Martin Rein, Dilemmas of Social Reform (New York: Atherton Press, 1967), pp, 222Poverty

55. See ,

56,

223,

57, See Daniel Patrick Moynihan, munity Action in the War on Poverty 58,

New York Times

Maximum Feasible Misunderstanding: Com(New York: The Free Press, 1969),

July 24, 1966,

(Englewood Cliffs, N, : PrenStudies in nine cities of inner-city housing problems led to the conclusion

59. Ralph M, Kramer,

tice- Hall,

Panic/pat ion qLthe Poor

Inc" 1969), p, 256,

The " Dear Abby" correspondence column on July I I, 1966,

appeared in the (McNaught) syndicated

I. Harlem Youth Opportunities Unlimited, Inc" " Youth in the Ghetto " (New York: multilithed, 1964), p, 33, 2, However, a Survey Research Center study, begun in 1968 and repeated at intervals, ofa nationally representative panel of boys (there were 1 620 in the sample, including 286 dropouts, in the summer of 1970) found the weekly

ployed dropouts to be nearly identical to those of employed incomes of high school graduates; this was so even when the groups were matched for length of time on their present jobs, The unemployment rate of the nongradu-

ates was twice that of the graduates, but this " is caused primarily by family background and ability factors, " There was a difference of about five IQ points between the dropouts and the graduates, Jerald G, Bachman, SwayzeI'

vo!. III: Dropping in Transition, Youth (Ann Arbor: Survey Research Center , 197 I), In an earlier Project TALENT study, Combs and Cooley, using data from the participants who were in the ninth grade in 1960, found that employment rates of male dropouts and controls were almost identical (87 and 89 percent, respectively, had full- time jobs) and the mean yearly salary of the employed dropouts was slightly more than that of the controls ($3, 650 as against $3, 500), Unfortunately, the authors write , the results of their study were not consistent with their expectation, which was to reveal that the graduate was much better off than the dropout, a finding that " might help dissuade some students from leaving high-school before graduation. " Later follow-up studies by Project TALENT, they say, may " show more precisely the disadvantages of dropping out of high schoo!." Janet Combs and William W, Cooley, American Educational Dropouts: In High School and After School," Research loumal, 5 (May 1968): 352, 362,

Green, and Ilona 0, Wirtanen, Out

Problem or Symptom?

" "

326

THE UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED

3, Theodore W, Schultz,

Education and Productivity,

Commission OR Productivity (June 197 I), Capital (New York: The Free Press, 1971),

327

NOTES FOR CHAPTER 7

1973), See also

prepared for the Nationall

Investment in Human

An important collection of papers on the impacts of higher education which appeared too late for mention in the text, is: Lewis C. Solomon and Paul J, Taubman, eds" Does College Matter? (New York: Academic Press 4, Finis Welch

Black- White Differences in Returns to Schooling, American Economic Review 63 (December 1973), Welch finds the percentage increase

that the market buys are not very closely associated with ability tests, Perhaps the socializing skills associated with school attendance are dominant, but I doubt that existing measures of cognitive development are accurate enough to warrant such a conclusion, Relationships between Income and Schooling," p, 14, 9, Cited by Bennett Harrison,

Education , Training, and the Urban Ghetto,

34,

Inequality, A Reassessment of the Effect of Family (New York: Basic Books, 1972), pp, 182- 183, in the wage rate associated with an extra year of schooling in 1966 to have II, Daniel E, Diamond, " America s Unskilled Workers: Some Problems and been 23, 0 for black urban males who entered the labor force in 19631965 as Solutions," dittoed paper, New York University (September 29, 1966), This against 14, 6 for white; for those entering in 1959--1962, 14, 2 and 10, 6; for.paper has been helpful on many of the points discussed in this section, those entering in 1955- 1958 9 and 8, 2; for those entering in 1947- 1954, pp, 182- 183, Inequality, 12, Jencks et aI., and 9, 0, and for those entering in 1934-1946, 9 and 6, 13, According to one study a fourth year of high school would cost more (in Barry R, Chiswick suggests that greater uncertainty of returns from investearnings forgone) than it would be worth (in increased future earnings) in 6 ment in schooling by nonwhites may make them less responsive than whites of 22 occupations ifthe future earnings are discounted at 5 percent and in 13 to changes in the average rate of return from such investment. As much as of the 22 if they are discounted at 10 percent. One who finishes high school one- half of their greater uncertainty may be due , he finds, to the greater and then becomes an electrician, for example , would lose $1, 127 at the 5 instability of nonwhite employment during the year. " Racial Differences in ' percent discount rate and $2 255 at the 10 percent rate by investing in the the Variation of Rates of Return from Schooling, " in G, von Furstenberg et fourth year of high school. (The data are for whites, ) Stuart 0, Schweitzer aI., eds" Patterns of Racial Discrimination vol. II, Employment and Income Occupational Choice, High School Graduation, and Investment in Human (Lexington , Mass, : D, c. Heath, forthcoming 1974), Journal of Human Resources 6 (Summer 1971): 331. Capital," For data and bibliography showing (Chicago: Quadrangle in a High School lower returns to blacks, see Bennett Rebellion 14, Arthur L. Stinchcombe, Harrison, Education , Training, and the Urban Ghetto (Baltimore: The Johns , 1964), p, 180, Books Hopkins University Press, 1972), Annual Report of the Most job-related skills are learned on the job, See the 5, See especially Herbert Gintis, " Education Technology and the CharacterisJanuary 1965, Table 17, p, 129, See also Council of Economic Advisers tics of Worker Productivity, American Economic Review 61 (May 1971): Jacob Mincer, " On-the- Job Training: Costs, Returns, and Some Implica266-279; and Z, Grilliches and M, Mason Education , Income and Ability, 70 (Part 2, Supplement, October 1962): Journal of Political Economy, tions," Journal of Political Economy, 80 (Part 2 , May/June 1972): S74- 103, In this 50-73, same issue of the Journal of Political Economy, Paul Taubman comments Apprenticeship is also of small importance in training workers, See Feli(pp, SI06-1O7) that although he agrees on the relative unimportance ofIQ he Monthly Labor cian F, Foltman, " An Assessment of Apprenticeship," finds that mathematical ability is important indeed as important as 87 (January 1964): 33, Review,

amount of schooling, 6, The literature dealing with the effect of " family background" is discussed in Finis Welch, " Relationships between Income and Schooling, Journal of Research in Education forthcoming, 1974, On the link between mother s schooling and son s earnings see J, Hunt, " Income Determinants for College Graduates and the Return to Educational Investment Yale Economic Essays (1963): 305- 357, Using data from a high- income population, Leibowitz finds that mother s and father s education have equal impacts on schooling while mother s education is much more important in determining IQ, Arleen Leibowitz, " Home Investments in Children, Journal of Political Economy,

forthcoming,

7, Gintis, " Education 8,

Technology," p, 276, Sowell, Race and Economics (New York: David McKay, forthcoming, 1974), ch, 7, Finis Welch suggests still another interpretation of the data, " It is surprising," he writes, " that the value of schooling holding measured cognitive achievement constant is 80 to 90 percent as high as when achievement is not held constant, This says only that tI1e attributes associated with schooling

10, Christopher Jencks et aI., and Schooling in America

15, Jencks et aI.,

Inequality,

p, 110,

The Tyranny of

16, Ruby Jo Reeves Kennedy, quoted in Lewis Anthony Dexter,

(New York: Basic Books, 1964), pp, 114- 116 (italics in the origiSchooling nal), See also Arthur R, Jensen, " How Much Can We Boost IQ and Scholastic

Achievement?"

Harvard Educational Review,

39 (Winter 1969): 13- 16,

Urbanization (Detroit: Caribbean Research Institute,

17, See the remarks by Howard R, Stanton in Arthur J, Field, ed" in Modernizing Societies and Work

Glengary Press, 1966), pp, 9--13,

18, For an important case in point, see the study by Eli Ginsburg and Douglas W, Bray of the army s prejudice during World War II against illiterates and slow learners,

The Uneducated

(New York: Columbia University Press, 1953),

especially chs, 6 and 7, 19, Sowell,

Black Education: Myths and Tragedies

290, 20, Cf, R, Wayne Jones, in Field,

Urbanization and Work pp, 57-58,

2 I, See , for examplo;:, Allison Davis, Child,"

(New York: McKay, 1972),

" Status

Systems and the Socialization of the

American Sociological Review 6 (June 1941): 352-354, Davis says

,"

NOTES FOR CHAPTER 7 / 329

328 / THE UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED

that the middle- class child is taught that he will be rewarded if he learns, whereas the lower- class one is taught that he will not be:

As the middle- class child grows older, the effective rewards in maintaining learning are increasingly those of status; they are associated

with the prestige of middle- or upper- class rank and culture. The class

goals in education, occupation, and status are made to appear real,

valuable , and certain to him because he actually begins to experience in his school, clique , and family life some of the prestige responses. The lower- class child, however learns by not being rewarded in these prestige relationships that the middle- class goals and gains are neither likely nor desirable for one in his position. He discovers by trial-and-error learning that he is not going to be rewarded in terms of these long-range, status goals, if he is a " good little boy, " if he avoids the sexual and recreational exploration available to him in his lower- class environ-

ment, or if he studies his lessons. In this learning, he is often more

realistic than his teacher, if one judges by the actual cultural role which the society affords him. 22. Herbert J. Gans,

The Urban Villagers

p. 133.

(New York: The Free Press, 1962),

23. Jencks et aI., Inequality, p. 141. 24. Cf. Basil Bernstein, " Social Class

and Linguistic Development: A Theory of aI., eds., Education , Economy, and Society (New York: The Free Press, 1961), pp. 306-307. 25. C. Arnold Anderson, " A Skeptical Note on Education and Mobility, " in Education , Economy, and Society,. p. 176. 26. Philip K. Jensen , James M. O' Kan b, David Graybeal, and Robert W. Friedrichs Evaluating Compensatory Education: A Case Study, Education and Social Learning, " in A. H. Halsey et

Urban Society, 4 (February 1972): 2 11- 223. 27. James S. Coleman et aI. Equality of Educational

Opporwnity,

Office of

Education , U. S. Department of Health , Education , and Welfare (Washington, : U. S. Government Printing Office ,

1966).

28. For a critical review of the literature reanalyzing the Coleman Report, see the essay review of Frederick Mosteller and Daniel P. Moynihan, eds. On Equality of Educational Opportunity: Papers Deriving from the Harvard University Faculty Seminar on the Coleman Report by Gerald Grant in Harvard Educational Review

29. Harvey A. A verch ,

42 (February 1972): 109-125.

Stephen J. Carroll, Theodore S. Donaldson, Herbert J. Keesling, and John Pincus How Effective Is Schooling? A Critical Review and Synthesis of Research Findings (Santa Monica , Calif. : The Rand Corporation, 956- PCSF/RC, March 1972), multilithed.

The Irony of Early School Reform

orientedness. Michael B. Katz,

bridge , Mass. : Harvard University Press, 1968), p. 121. 35. Bernstein, " Social Class and Linguistic Development," p. 306 (italics in the original). 36. Cloward and Jones, " Social Class," p. 194.

as suffering 37. Baratz and Baratz consider it " racist" to view the Negro childa handicap from a language or cognitive " deficit" when what he has is " terms of the white middle class standard. Many lower-class- Negro children speak a well-ordered, highly structured, but different dialect from that of standard English" ; teaching should start with this language and teach them the other so as to " produce a bicultural child. " Curiously they say nothing about: (a) whites who speak a similar lower- class " dialect, " or (b) blacks (other than lower- class) who do not speak a dialect. Stephen S. Baratz and of Jean C. Baratz, " Early Childhood Intervention: The Social Science Base Institutional Racism, Harvard Educational Review 40 (February 1970): 29-50. Stability and Change in Human Characteristics

38. Benjamin S. Bloom,

(New

York: Wiley, 1964), pp. 207- 208, 127.

Martin Deutsch suggests that it is at the three- to four- year-old level that the deprived child might most successfully be helped to catch up. " Facilitating Development in the Pre- School Child: Social and Psychological Perspec(Garden City, Pre- School Education Today tives, " in Fred M. Hechinger, ed., : Doubleday, 1966), p. 84. 39. U. S. Office of Education, " Education of the Disadvantaged: An Evaluative I, Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, Fiscal Report on Title , 197 I). Quoted Year 1970 " (Washington, D. : Government Printing Office in Averch et aI.,

How Effective Is Schooling?,

p. 103.

p. 135. Bachman and his fellow researchers of the Survey Research Center concluded that . . . there are alternatives to a

40. Jencks et aI.,

Inequality,

p. 182.

twelve- year diploma; perhaps one based on ten years would be sufficient. Youth in Transition,

vol.

III,

J. M. "!'anner, a British educational psychologist, objects to any schoolleaving age as such on the grounds that there is great biological variability in

Resources for Social Change

1971), p. 28.

in a Northern Community

61.

(New York: Columbia Teachers College , 1963), p. 193. The midnineteenth-century high school deliberately inculcated future(Cam-

Depressed Areas

The Consequences of Segregation: Academic Achievement (Berlfeley, Calif. : The Glendessary Press, 1969),

31. James S. Coleman,

32. Alan B. Wilson,

class and associative levels.

" Social Class: Educational 34. Richard A. Cloward and James A. Jones, Passow, Education in ed., Attitudes and Participation," in A. Harry

(New York: Wiley-

The First Year of Sesame Street, A n Evalua(Princeton: Educational Testing Service , 1970).

Interscience ,

stein uses the term " working class " rather than (as earlier) lower class, but he includes in that class " all members of the semi-skilled and unskilled group except the type of family structure indicated as the base line for the middle-

In Philadelphia the City Council was recently told by an associate superintendent of schools that the state s attendance law, which requires attendance until the age of seventeen unless a student has a confirmed promise of ajob (in which case he may leave at sixteen) is " archaic. " Many pupils , he said, are in The Evening Bulletin school only because the law requires them to be there.

30. Samuel Ball and Gerry Begatz, tion

33. Bernstein, " Social Class and Linguistic Development," pp. 296, 307. Bern-

December 27, 1972.

the rate at which children mature:

NOTES FOR CHAPTER 7 / 331

330 / THE UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED

We need not a production- line like an apple-sorter , with children falling off at age- given points of 16 or 18, some immature and some rotted by boredom and the stultifying effect of a situation they feel intuitively to be contrived, A network rather should be the model, with many paths through it, offering to the individual child a route more in accordance

with his own particular speed of development and his own particular gifts, Such a system could be built if the barriers between school and industrial community were progressively removed , so that one child went to his apprenticeship as another to a new form. In neither case would the progression be dependent on chronological age , but on physical development , emotional needs , manual capabilities and intelligence, One boy might begin to spend a considerable proportion of his time in an engineering shop from age 13 onwards , though always under the ultimate control of the educational authorities, If at 16 he had after all discovered a talent for figures, he could increase the proportion of time in the schoolroom, Another late-maturing though not very intelligent boy might remain in the more protected school environment till 16 or even 17, emerging gradually into the community as science , humanism and common sense alike dictate , and not at the occurrence of an arbitrary birthday. School- leaving age could be abolished, but " education " continued for all up to 18 or 20, The economic system would have to be arranged so that passage from school to industry or vice versa did not penalize the child financially. J, M, Tanner

Education and Physical Growth

(Princeton, N, : Princeton University Press, 1962), p, 128, (Italics in States the original.) SO. The study was by Project TALENT; see John C. Flanagan and William W, (Pittsburgh: Project TALENT, A Survey and Follow-up Study Cooley, 1966), ch, 10, p, 36, School of Education, University of Pittsburgh, (Cambridge, Mass, : The MIT. Press, 1973), p, 139, PriWork in America S1. 000 and 3S, 000 vately run vocational schools, of which there are between 7, have never been with between I and I, S million students (data onin them impressome instances gathered systematically), are reported to be having

ited Objectives

Publishing Co., Inc" 1969),

52, Trow, " The Second Transformation," p, 448,

53, However, as IlIich remarks, childhood is experienced as a burden by some: Many of them are simply forced to go through it and are not at all happy (New York: Harper playing the child' s role." Ivan IlIich, Deschooling Society & Row, 1970), p, 27, 54. Persuasive testimony from one with special knowledge was given in the letWashington Post February 28, 1970, as follows: ters columns of the

Job Applicant Why hasn t a change been made in the law regarding the hiring of 1314- and Is- years-olds? This would allow more businesses to employ them for part- time jobs, There is a law about hiring people according to

(London: UniversityofLondon

Press, 1961), p. 124.

race, creed, color or religion, You see plenty of jobs advertised in the newspapers that a young teenager could and would handle; but when he goes to apply for it and tells his age Jobs such as busboy, or a fellow in the back room to help sweep up ,orI move boxes are just two things that he could do well. Furthermore think if more teenagers were given the opportunity to work a few hours t be so much after school, on holidays and weekends, there wouldn lack juvenile delinquency, Much damage and bodily harm is caused by sa own

Rebellion in a High School p. 179. 42, Martin Trow The Second Transformation of American Secondary Education," in R. Bendix and S, M, Lipset, eds., Class , Status, and Power 2d ed, (New York: The Free Press, 1966), p, 448, 43, Quoted in E. G, West Education and the State (London: The Institute of Economic Affairs , I96S), p, 36,

41. Stinchcombe

Social Relations in a Secondary School (New York: The Humanities Press, 1967), pp, 172- 173. The observations were made in a school in a " problem area " ofa city in northern England, For another view of the school as a cause of delinquency, seeJ, R. Eichorn, " Delinquency and the Educational System, " in H. C, Quay, ed" Juvenile Delinquency (Princeton, : Van Nostrand, I96S). For proof that a white teacher who really likes children, including lowerblack ones, and is well endowed with patience and pluck can succeedclass in a black school, see Kim Marshall Law and Order in Grade 6- (Boston: Little

, he is turned down,

44, David H, Harbreaves,

4S.

Brown and Company, 1972),

46, Howard S. Becker School is a Lousy Place to Learn Anything, American Behavioral Scientist 16 (September-October 1972): 103, 47, Mobilization for Youth, Inc. A Proposal for the Prevention and Control of Delinquency by Expanding Opportunities (New York: Author, 1961), p. 112, 48, Quoted in Harrison Brown-, James Bonner , and John Weir, The Next Hundred Years (New York: Viking, I9S7), pp, 132- 133, 49, Fritz Machlup, The Production and Distribution of Knowledge in the United

ofthe public system,

sive successes with students many of whom dropped out Private Vocational Schools and Their StUdents; LimSee A. Harvey Belitsky,(Cambridge , Mass, : Schenk man , Unlimited OpportUnities

of something purposeful to do and the capability to earn one spending money, GARY COURTNEY, Age i4 Bowie , Md,

55, Of the boys among them, nearly 2 I percent were clerical workers, 18 percent sales workers, 18 percent operatives and kindred workers, 16 percent service workers (not including private household), and 20 percent laborers, 1970 , New York, PC(I)- D34, Dec, 1972, Table

56.

Census, Detailed Characteristics 174, PP. 34- 1008-1010. story of March 30, 1971 begins: " Times are tough and A Wall Street Journal s called some companies are turning to an effective cost-cutting device, It'

child labor." According to the story, the provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act are rarely implemented because few violations can be proved to be

)"

THE UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED

332

NOTES FOR CHAPTER 8

willful. At that time the last case resulting in criminal penalties was in when a construction firm was fined $6, 000 for employing 152 youths, 1968'1 57, In a personal communication,

333

S), the latter felt deprived, A second reason for rising expectations lay in the promises and hopes arising from the developments in Robbery and the civil rights in the decade prior to 1965, " John E, Conklin,

blacks (in the 1960

Criminal JI/stice System

(Philadelphia: J, B. Lippincott Company, 1972),

30,

2. A study in a high- delinquency area of Philadelphia showed that boys born

CHAPTER 8 Several Kinds of Crime The quotation from Henry George at the head of the chapter is from

Social (New York, 1883), p, 12, The second quotation is from the report of the President's Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice Problems

Challenge of Crime in a Free Society

(Washington, D, c.:

257,

U, S,

The

Government PrintCrime statistics are notoriously unreliable for many reasons, some of which are inherent in the nature of crime, Nevertheless, it is impossible todiscuss the subject ing Office , February 1967), p, 6,

without making use of them, The reader should be warned, however

, that few perfectly safe factual statements are possible, For a good discussion of the limitations of the data , see Marvin E, Wolfgang, " Urban Crime " in James Q, Wilson ed" The Metropolitan Enigma (Cambridge , Mass, : Harvard University Press, 1968), pp, 253-

Except as otherwise noted ,

published annually by the FBI.

all figures are from the

Uniform Crime Reports

I, Against the theory that

poverty in the sense oflow income causes crime , it has S, when crime rates rose dramatically, the number of families with incomes below the poverty line decreased by onebeen pointed out that in the 1960

third, This figure , however, must be disaggregated: there was no decline in the number of poor nonwhite , female- headed households that included teen-age

children, It has also been argued against the poverty theory that the rate of increase was at least as high for crimes like rape and automobile theft that do not increase the offender s income (most automobile thefts are by joy-riding teen-agel's) as for others, This objection would seem also to apply, although perhaps less strongly, to a " relative deprivation " theory, but empirical studies. support this type of theory, Eberts and Schwirian found the rates of crime against both property and persons to be highest in SMSA'

s where the income population is a distinct local minority and the occupational gaplowbe- f. tween whites and nonwhites is greatest , and Ehrlich found that the rates for all felonies (but especially those against property) are positively related to the degree of income inequality in a community, Paul Eberts and Kent p, Schwirian, " Metropolitan Crime Rates and Relative Deprivation Criminologica, 5 (February 1968): 43- 52, and Isaac Ehrlich, " The Deterrent Effect of Crimi-

nal Law Enforcement, Journal of Legal Sit/dies I (June 1972): 276, Conklin progressive deprivation " one of the most adequate explanations for the

finds "

motivation of violent behavior. (This exists when value expectations one feels entitled to) are rising at the same time that

(what

value capabilities one feels capable of getting ork'eeping) are either declining or rising(what at a slower rate, To the extent that the whites gained as fast or faster than the

there were much more likely to commit delinquencies, and to commit more serious ones, than boys whose parents had migrated from places where presumably housing, schools, health conditions, and the level ofliving in general were much poorer, Leonard Savitz, " Delinquency and Migration, " in M. E, The Sociology of Crime and DelinWolfgang, L. Savitz, and N, Johnston, quency (New York: Wiley, 1962), pp. 203- 204, A Washington, D, C" delinquency project in existence from 1964 to 1967 succeeded through the use of programmed instruction in producing educational gains of from three to six grade levels in high school dropouts from slum areas with delinquent careers, However, " the rate of delinquent acts was in no measurable way reduced by participation in the project, Those subjects passing the G ED (high school equivalency) test were more delinquent than those failing the test, " C. Ray Jeffery and Ina A, Jeffery, " Delinquents and Dropouts: An Experimental Program in Behavior Change," Mimeographed,

1968, Graduate School of Public Administration, New York University, The project was supported in part by contract number OE 6- 85- 355, U, S, Office of Education, 3, To the extent that the analysis here departs from the usual theory of rational decision-making it owes much to the work of Walter B. Miller. See especially his " The Impact of a 'Total- Community ' Delinquency Control Project," Social Problems JO (Fall 1962): 168-- I 90, and his ' Theft Behavior in City Juvenile Gangs in Context Gangs," in M, W, Klein and B, G, Myerhoff, eds" (Englewood Cliffs, N, : Prentice- Hall, 1967), Miller s theoretical work will (New York: Wiley, forthcoming), City Gangs be systematically presented in 4, Conklin remarks that addicts tend to avoid confrontation with their victims

when stealing since this would increase the chance of getting caught and therefore of a long prison term and offorced withdrawal from drugs, Addicts, he thinks, may have some responsibility for the rising robbery rate but " most pp, 54 robbers have never been arrested for drug law violations, Robbery, and 57,

5, Economists generally proceed on the assumption that in most cases crime " simply a business oriented economic activity which is undertaken for much the same reasons as other types of economic activity, " For a valuable set of papers, including much bibliography, based on this assumption, ' see Simon (Washington, The Economics of Crime and Punishment Rottenberg, ed" c.: The American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research , 1973). The quoted words are from the Preface, 6, Chambliss offers the hypothesis that " where a high commitment to crime as. way oflife is combined with involvement in an act that is expressive, one finds

the greatest resistance to deterrence through threat of punishment, At the other extreme are acts where commitment to crime is low and where the act is

instrumental (such as the Snitch, the white-collar criminal, or the parking law violator), Here we would expect both general and specific deterrence to be

,"

334 / THE UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED

maximally effective, "

30,

NOTES FOR CHAPTER 8

William J, Chambliss, " Types Effectiveness of Legal Sanctions,

238--248,

of Deviance and t Wisconsin Law Review 703 (196711:.

7, The distinctions made in this paragraph are adapted from Lawrence Kohll berg, ' The Child as a Moral Philosopher, Psychology Today,

335

although riot likely to have much money, are easiest and safest for them to handle; these are persons who are alone , female, old, or, preferably, all three, Robbery, p, 91. Friedlander, in his study of unemployment in the core areas of thirty cities,

Conklin,

2 (Septembe

found that a record of criminal activities did not seem to present a problem for black youth in securing employment and that being arrested carried no Subculture of Violence great social stigma and " is often viewed as a mark of courage and honor (Lon don: Tavistock Publications Ltd" 1967), pp,The 154 and 260-261. See also Tras among the young, " The law enforcement system did not inflict substantial ler, who stresses, as the foundation of morality, the child' anxiety abou~ deterrents, " Given both the low probability ofarrest and the limited penalties losing his parents ' goodwill and who points out that if, as iss fypical in th imposed, " he concludes, " the rewards of hustling oftenjustify the activities on lower class, the child is constantly fearful and insecure in his relationship Unemployment in the rational, benefit-cost grounds, " Stanley L. Friedlander, wit~r. his parents the necessary " avoidance conditioning " may not occur. Gordo Urban Core: An Analysis of Thirty Cities with Policy Recommendations Trasler The Explanation of Criminality (London: Routledge and Kega (New York: Praeger, 1972), p, 184, Paul , 1962), pp, 70-83, (New York: Delta, 1965), po 287, The Uncommitted 16, Kenneth Keniston, 9, Henry Williamson, The Public Hustler! edited by R, Lincoln Keiser (New York: AVOn, 17, Norman E, Zinberg, " Facts and Fancies about Drug Addiction, want nothing 6 (Winter 1967): 76-77, Dr. Zinberg calls those who " Interest 10, Carroll divided three hundred Negro adolescents into " oblivionmiddle " and " lower but the immediate satisfaction of specific, pleasurable desires class and had them write explanations of why stealing and cheating are but it is hard to see why, seekers wrongo Some of her findings may be summarized as follows: Far from being an important component of " experience" as understood by the (expressively) future- oriented individual, " pleasure " seems to be in opposition to it. Thus Dr. Timothy Leary withdrew as guru of a drug-using group PERCENT GIVING REASON because he was " dismayed over mere pleasure- seekers " in the movement. Psychedelic drugs, he said, are " too valuable to be used for mere pleasure Reasons Middle class Lower class November and " should be for developing self- knowledge, New York Times It is wrong to steal because: 29, 1967, Toward the Year 2000: You might get caught 18, Cfo James Q, Wilson, " Violence, " in Daniel Bell, ed" Your friends won t like you (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1968), ppo 283- 2840 DurkWork in Progress You will get a bad name heim s discussion of the " egoistic" basis of suicide in the upper classes is It is wrong to cheat because: relevant to the point being made in the text. Someone will find it out in its Uniform Crime Reporting FBI 19, " Index " crimes are those used by the 3I violent Someone will cheat you back Program to measure " serious" common local crime problems, The " Children will not want to play games category includes murder, forcible rape, aggravated assault, and robbery, The with you property" category includes burglary, larceny $50 and over in value, and 1968): 25-

8, Marvin E, Wolfgang and Franco Ferracuti,

i'l

1965), pp, 150-151.

58

Rebecca Evans Carroll, " Relation of Social Environment to the Moral Ideology and the Personal Aspirations of Negro Boys and Girls, The School Review 53 (January 1945): 32, Source:

I I. Joyce Ann Ladner Deviance in the Lower Class Adolescent SubPruitt- Igoe Project Occasional Paper #3, Department of Culture SociologyAnthropology, Washington University, St. Louis (September 1966), p, 25,

12, Ibid" p, 26, 13, Allison Davis,

Social- Class

auto theft.

Dimensions of the Population Problem in the United 864(Santa Monica, Calif, : The Rand Corporation, Monograph RCPG, August 1972), p, 17, 21. What follows draws upon the work of Walter Bo Miller cited earlier, of Delinquent 22, David Cumming and Elaine Cumming, " The Everyday Life Among the eds" Boys, " in Irwin Deutscher and Elizabeth J, Thompson, (New York: Basic Books, 1968), po 152, People: Encounters with the Poor

20, Peter Ao Morrison, States

Delinquency and Drift

23, David Matza,

(New York: Wiley, 1964),

pp, 89,

189-190, Influences Upon Learning

(Cambridge, Mass, Harvard University Press, 1948), p, 34, 14, Menachem Amir Patterns in Forcible Rape (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 197 I), pp, 313 and 325- 3260 15, The least skillful and experienced- robbers (" opportunists " as opposed to professionals ) tend to be young and to be black, They choose victims who,

24, Keniston,

The Uncommilled,

p, 184, See also pp, 398--399,

250 Walter B, Miller, " Violent Crimes in City Gangs, The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 364 (March 1966): 112, " in Abraham 26, Walter B, Miller, " American Youth Gangs: Past and Present Blumberg, ed"

A Reader in Criminal Justice

Knopf, forthcoming 1974),

(New York: Random House-

THE UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED

336

NOTES FOR CHAPTER 8

27, For Boston see Theodore N, Ferdinand, ' The Criminal Patterns of Boston I Since 1849, American Journal of Sociology, 73 (July 1967): 8499, and Roger Lane Urbanization and Criminal Violence in the Nineteenth Century, Journal of Social History, Alexander B. Callow , Jr" ed"

city, The Los Angeles Police Department found that better street lighting did

not reduce street crimes but in Chicago, where the same experiment was tried,

robbery rates dropped 10 to 15 percent in the alleys and dark streets where

2 (December 1968): 156--163 (reproduced in

51, 000 lights had been installed while increasing 72, 1

2d edition, New

A merican Urban History,

28, Roger Starr, in

Criminal La w ,

September 24, 1972 29, James M, Markham, " Heroin Hunger May Not a Mugger Make , p, 95, New York Times Magazine March 18, 1973,

30, Jacqueline Grennan The Age of the Person 168, 3 I.

New York Times

March 12 ,

Seventeen

(December 1967):

Soul On Ice

35, Personal communication to the author, March 19, 1973,

36, Joseph F, Coates, " The Future of Crime in the U, S, from Now to the Year

2000 Policy Sciences 3 (March 1972): 31. 37, A winter camping program for underprivileged children was suspended after the death of an eleven- year-old South Bronx girl who struck a tree stump while sliding down a ski slope in a saucer sled, The program , which served 500 children a week, was financed by a grant of $ 102, 743 from the Model Cities Administration, New York Times February 22 , 1973, 38, LIad Phillips, Harold L. Votey, Jr. , and Darold Maxwell, " Crime, Youth and the Labor Market Journal of Political Economy, 80 (May/June 1972): 503, 39, Stanley L. Friedlander, unemployment rates for the

Unemployment in the Urban Core, city

pany, 1967), p, 43n,

p, 94, However,

(as opposed to non-whites) showed no rela-

tion to criminal activity (p, 85). 40, Quoted by Elliot Liebow Tally s

Corner

knowing whether the effect has been to shift these crimes to other parts of the Robbery,

city or to other cities, Conklin,

p. 185,

New York Times January 27, 1969, 43, Gold found from interviews with a sample ofteen-agers in Flint, Mich" that most of them did not regard delinquent behavior as risky: fear of apprehension was " not a strong force working to restrain delinquent behavior. " In fact, 42,

the actual risk of getting caught was smaller than most of them thought.

1969,

(New York: Delta , 1968), pp, 13- 14, 33, Cf, Gresham M, Sykes and David Matza Techniques of Neutralization: A Theory of Delinquency, American Sociological Review 22 (December 1957): 664- 670, See also David Matza Delinquency and Drift, Philadelphia Evening Bulletin March 19, 1973, 34. 32, Eldridge Cleaver

by 65 percent and assaults by 75 percent. There is , of course, no way of

Criminology and

New York Times Magazine,

percent in the city as a

whole, In Gary, Indiana, better lighting was credited with reducing robberies

York: Oxford University Press, 1973); for Buffalo, see Elwin H, Powell, Crime as a Function of Anomie journal of Police Science 57 (June 1966): 161-171.

337

(Boston; Little , Brown and Com-

In a newspaper account of a forthcoming book about the " irregular economy " written with his wife , Professor Louis A. Ferman of the University of Michigan School of Social Work is quoted as saying that when they began studying " hard core " residents of the Detroit ghetto, " We hypothesized that they would be alienated and withdrawn from society; engaged in occasional job seeking and leisure pursuits, " It turned out that most were working regularly, " Some in criminal activities- such as prostitution or most in conventional jobs including gardening, handicrafts narcotics- but home repair , or the selling oflow- priced goods, " Most of the work was illegal, in that it was not reported for licensing or tax purposes, The Philadelphia Inquirer September , 1973, 41. James Q, Wilson, " Crime and Law Enforcement " in Kermit Gordon, ed" Agendafor the Nation (Washington , D, c.: The Brookings Institution, 1968), p, 187,

Accounts of the effectiveness~of such measures vary greatly from city to

Delin(Belmont, Calif, : Brooks/Cole Publish-

About 3 percent of offenses resulted in apprehension, Martin Gold, ill an A merican City

quent Behm'ior

ing Company, 1970), ch, 6, 44, James Q, Wilson, " If

Caught, , , ,

Every Criminal

Knew

New York Times Magazine,

He Would Be Punished if

January 28, 1973, p, 55,

45, In animal experimentation, by contrast, it has been shown that severity of punishment is most important. Holding severity constant, however, punishment is most effective when administered simultaneously with or a few seconds after the behavior that is to be suppressed, For a review ofthis literature and comment on its implications for the control of crime see Barry Fe Singer, Psychological Studies of Punishment, Califomia Law Review 58 (March 1970), 46, George E. Antunes and A, Lee Hunt, ' The Impact of Certainty and Security

of Punishment on Levels of Crime in American States: An Extended Analysis, " Paper delivered before American Political Science Association, September 1972,

47, Charles R, Tittle Crime Rates and Legal Sanctions, Social Problems (Spring 1969): 409-423, 48, Isaac Ehrlich, " The Deterrent Effect of Criminal Law Enforcement, Journal (June 1972), pp, 259-276 and " Participation in Illegitiof Legal StlIdies mate Activities: A Theoretical and Empirical Investigation, Journal of Political Economy,

81 (May/June 1973): 521- 565,

49. Morgan Owen Reynolds Crimes for Profit: The Economy of Theft, " unpublished Ph, D, dissertation , University of Wisconsin , 1971. Table 6For the framework of a benefit-cost analysis of law enforcement in general, see Gary S, Becker, " Crime and Punishment: An Economic Approach Journal of Political Economy,

50, In Washington, D, c.,

76 (1966): 169-217, The Self- Inflicted Wound

Fred p, Graham remarks in

(New York: Macmillan, 1970), P, 299, " with serious criminality hurtling

along at a reported rate of almost 66, 000 per year, the number of people being

convicted each year for those same serious crimes was so small (in 1968) that

they could be seated comfortably in one courtroom,

51, This paragraph draws heavily upon Robert Gold, " Urban

temporary Defensive Cities,

Violence and ConA merican Institute of Planners Journal

(May 1970): 152, On city planning and defense against violent crime , see, in addition to the

'"':'

THE UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED

338

article by Gold cited above , Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great Ameri(New York: Random House , 1961), and Oscar Newman Crime Prevention Through Urban Design (New York: Macmillan, 1973), The Booster and the Snitch: Department Store Shop52: Mary Owen Cameron, lifting (New York: The Free Press, 1964), p, 17, 53, L. R, Zeitlin, " A Little Larceny Can Do a Lot for Employee Morale Psychology Today, 5 (June 1971), pp, 22- 26 and 64- 66, can Cities

Prevention and Control of Crime and Delin54, Space- General Corporation, quency, Final Report Prepared for Youth and Adult Corrections Agency,

State of California , Mimeographed , El Monte , California (July 29, 1965), p, 2,

55, These justifications are offered by Glover in support of suggestions not unlike those in the text. " Hopelessly inadequate people, " he writes, " might benefit from a form of probation , very different from what we have now where very great supervision would be exercised over their lives, They might be compelled to take certain jobs, and in some cases to live in certain hostels,

Instead of the withering of necessary social skills that now takes place in prison, they could learn, under close supervision, how to adapt themselves

better to the ordinary world of having a regular job, " Jonathan Glover Responsibility (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul , 1970), p, 169, 56, Although the discussion in the text concerns " undeterrables " only, there are obvious advantages in having a wide gradation of possible punishments in other types of cases as well. Writing about the disposition of juvenile offenders , Kittrie remarks that the choice between poorly supervised probation on the one hand and last-resort commitment on the other is much too narrow, There is, " he says a need for dispositions less drastic than commitment yet more meaningful than probation, which can at the same time afford juvenile authorities an effective scrutiny of the youth' s rehabilitative progress, In some cities the police , through informal dispositions, have shown considerable innovation, With parental consent, they impose restrictions of varying severity upon offending juveniles , and many of these are reported to be highly effective, Kansas City, Missouri, utilizes a program called ' grounding.' A typical ' grounded' youth must attend school regularly, may leave the house only if accompanied by a parent , must dress conventionally, must cut his hair in a reasonable manner, and must study at home for a minimum prescribed period each day, After this schedule is enforced for a month, the conditions are gradually relaxed." Nicholas N, Kittrie The Right to Be Different; Deviance and Enforced Therapy (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1971),

P, 163,

57, The constitutionality of a Connecticut law authorizing the imprisonment on a state farm of young women " in manifest danger of falling into habits of vice or leading a vicious life" was recently challenged in the Supreme Court. In a per curiam decision three lines long, the Court dismissed the appeal for want of a properly presented federal question, " 89 Supreme Court Reporter

1767 (May 26, 1969),

Massachusetts law provides for the involuntary hospitalization of any person subject to a " character disorder " rendering him so lacking in "judgment or emotional control" that he may conduct himself in a manner that clearly violates the established, , conventions of the community, " In most

states, juvenile courts may exercise wide discretion in cases where behavior

NOTES FOR CHAPTER 8

339

is offensive without being criminal by adult standards, See Nicholas N, Kittrie The Right to Be Different especially pp, 68 and 114, With regard to " preventive detention, " i,e" detention pending trial of arrested persons who are judged likely to commit more crimes while awaiting trial, Professor Alan M, Dershowitz of the Harvard Law SchoolThe remarks crime to work: " seem that the problem with the system is that it would rate probably will go down slightly, and perhaps might be traceable to preventive detention, but what we won t know is how many, what proportion of the people confined, would actually not have committed crimes, " He says any such plan ought to be preceded by a long test period, in which judges

would select those persons they felt should be detained in order to see if, New when not detained, they did actually commit more crimes than others,

York Times January 30, 1969,

Be 58, The author has discussed these matters in " How Many, and Who, Should (ChiSet at Liberty?" , in Harry M, Clor, ed" Civil Disorder and Violence cago: Rand McNally Public Affairs Series, 1972), pp, 27-45,

CHAPTER 9 Rioting Mainly for Fun and Profit

Committee on 1. Report of the Task Force on Assessment of the President'sCrime and Its

Law Enforcement lmpact- An

Assessment

Office, 1967), p, 121.

and Administration of

Justice,

(Washington, D, c.: U, S,

2, Ibid" p, 122, The " deprivation "

Government Printing

theory has been criticized by (among others) of Clark McPhail, " Civil Disorder Participation: A Critical Examination 1971): Recent Research, American Sociological Review 36 (December 1064 and 1067; Seymour Spilerman (see footnote 48 below); and Morris " Janowitz Janowitz, " The notion of relative deprivation may be operative has written, " but this sociological term seems to hide more than it illuminates, One is struck by the repeated reports of the carnival and happy days spirit that pervade the early stages of a commodity riot." (A " commodity " riot is " and retail outburst (within the Negro community) against propertycommunal" establishments , plus looting ; it differs fundamentally from a " riot; these occurred prior to the Second War and were attempts to prevent of Escalated Negroes from movIng into " contested areas, Social Control (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968), pp, 13 and 10, Riots military 3, Some examples: in 1966 the Dutch found it necessary to call out (New York police to quell a riot of construction workers in Amsterdam June 15, 1966); the next year the Tel Aviv city hall was stoned by Times, (New York rioters protesting unemployment, three policemen being injured 000 Western European farmers 1971 some 80, Times March 15, 1967); in swarmed into Brussels to demand higher prices and in the ensuing melee one (New York Times March 24, 1971); in man wa~ killed and 140 injured October 1969, during a sixteen- hour wildcat strike of policemen in Montreal, a riot occurred in which two men were killed, scores injured, and an esti-

" "

340 / THE UNHEAVENLY CITY

REVISITED

NOTES FOR CHAPTER 9 / 341

mated $ 5 million in damage done to some 175 stores , hotels , and office build(New York Times October 8, 1969); at about the same time , 10 000 Italian police and soldiers were vainly struggling to restore order to Reggio

Even if a person engages in the most extreme act of violence against person or property during a disorder, he is not likely to be continuously or exclusively so engaged, Rather, he is likely to be intermittently engaged in a

ings

Calabria , a town disappointed at not having been named provincial capital (New York Times February I, 1971); that same spring Oriental Jews alleging discrimination fought street battles with riot police in Jerusalem for six hours (Washington Post May 19, 1971); and in early 1973, Japanese commuters, unable to board a train , smashed a station, putting the stationmaster and his assistant in the hospital, and then went on to occupy six other stations and to stone trains and jam switches (New York Times March 14, 1973), 4, David Matza Delinquency and Drift (New York: Wiley, 1964), pp, 189-190. New York Times August 6 , 1964. 5, Fred Powledge in 6. See Richard C, Wade, The Urban Frontier (Chicago: University of Chicago

Press, Phoenix Books, 1964), p. 90; and Howard 0, Sprogle The Philadelphia Police , Past and Present (Philadelphia, 1887), p, 50, 7, Wade The Urban Frontier p, 92, In Boston one house a month would not have been nearly enough; more than fifty buildings were fired by incendiaries in 1844 (Arthur Wellington Brayley, A Complete History of the Boston Fire Department Boston , 1889, p, 207), In Philadelphia thirty- four boys aged five

to fifteen were arrested in three summer months of 1862 for starting fires.

8,

(Sprogle The Philadelphia Police p, 318, Sprog1e The Philadelphia Police pp. 90,

Lippincott, 1873), pp. 118-119, Hell' s Kitchen 9. Cf. Richard O' Connor, See also Herbert Asbury, 10, Roger Lane,

II. 12.

The (Philadelphia: J, B,

106, See also Eli K, Price

History of the Consolidation of the City of Philadelphia

(Philadelphia: J, B, Lippincott , 1958), (New York: Knopf, 1927), 1822- 1885 (Cambridge , Mass, : Har-

The Gangs of New York

Policing the City, Boston

vard University Press, 1967), p. 29. New York Times September 16 , 1965. Brayley, Boston Fire Department pp. 15,

31.

13, See Mancur Olson, Jr.,

The Logic of Collective Action (Cambridge , Mass, Harvard University Press , 1965), The theory as applied to small groups is particularly relevant here; it is summarized on pp. 33- 36,

14. George W, Walling,

Recollections of a New York Chief of Police

Caxton Book Concern, 1887), p. 85.

(New York:

15, Thomas C. Schelling,

The Strategy ofConfiict (Cambridge , Mass, : Harvard University Press, 1960), p. 90. 16. George Rude The Crowd in History (New York: Wiley, 1964), p, 238, 17. Michael S, Hundus A City of Mobocrats and Tyrants: Mob Violence in Boston, 1747-1863, Issues in Criminology, 6 (Summer 197 I): 56, McPhail Civil Disorder Participation, " p, 1068, gives a vivid impression of the vari-

ety ofthe behaviors a rioteer might engage in during one of the large riots of

the 1960 S: " Within a one- hour period of time , a person might walk from a bar

or residence to the scene of a street arrest; chat with friends and acquaintances; curse the police; make a pass at a girl; throw a rock at a departing police car; light someone s cigarette; run down the street and join others in rocking and overturning a car; watch someone set the car on fire; drink a can of looted beer; assist firemen in extinguishing a fire as it spreads to an apartment house; and so on.

18,

wide range of routine and " illegal" activities during the course of his presence in the area of the disorder. July 29, See E. c. Banfield, " Roots of the Draft Riots, New York Magazine, 1968,

I 9, This section depends heavily upon a chronology compiled by the Legislative Congressional . Reference Service of the Library of Congress, It appears in the Quarterly

Special Report on Urban Problems and Civil Disorder, No, 36,

September 8, 1967, pp, 1708-1712,

20, William F, Soskin, " Riots, Ghettos, and the ' Negro Revolt,' " in Arthur M, (New York: Ross and Herbert Hill, eds. Employment, Race and Poverty

Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc" 1967), p, 223, The Harlem and Bedford-

Stuyvesant riots, together with the events leading up to them and the background situation, are described in Fred C. Shapiro and James W, Sullivan, 1964 (New York: Crowell, 1964), An opinion survey Race Riot: New York made in Bedford- Stuyvesant shortly after the July 1964 riot is reported in Joe R. Feagin and Paul S. Sheatsley, " Ghetto Resident Appraisals of a Riot," 32 (Fall 1968): 352- 362, Unfortunately the quesPublic Opinion Quarterly, tions asked (" How did the trouble start, as far as you know?" " What do you think the rioters were trying to do or to show?" ) were so ambiguous as to make the results of very little value, New York Times November 7, 1964, 21. Race Riot p, 204, 22. Shapiro and Sullivan, New York Times September 27, 1964. 23, II, 1964, New York Times September 24, 25, New York City Planning Commission, " The Future by Design," October 14New York Times October 7, 1964, 26. 27, Allen D, Grimshaw, " Changing Patterns of Racial Violence in the United States," in Allen D, Grimshaw , ed" Racial Violence in the United States (Chicago: Aldine Publishing Company, 1969), p. 496.

16, 1964, transcript, p, 55.

(New York: Harper & Row , 1967), p, 39, Protest and Prejudice Angus Campbell and Howard Schuman, in a survey made in fifteen major

28, GaryT, Marx,

cities for the Kerner Commission in early 1968 found that nearly two- thirds of the Negro respondents agreed that " over the past 10 or 15 years there has been a lot of progress in getting rid of racial discrimination. Raciai Attitudes in Fifteen American Cities," in National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders,

Supplemental Studies

(Washington, D,

: Government

Printing Office ,

July 1968), p. 22, 29. Comparing a sample of Negro males arrested during the Detroit riot of 1967

with a control group chosen from the area most affected by the riot, Luby found that the arrestees had no more grievances than the controls, that both arrestees and controls felt that they had made substantial progress in the past five years, and that both were remarkably optimistic about the future, Eliot D, Luby, M, D" " A Comparison Between Negro Riot Arrestees and a Riot Area Control Sample," paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, 1968,

", ""

""

:"

NOTES FOR CHAPTER 9 / 343

342 / THE UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED 30, Jerry Cohen and William S, Murphy,

Books, 1966), pp, 62- 63,

Burn ,

Baby, Burn!

(New York: Avon

Burn , Baby, Burn!, p, 7 I. The Los Angeles Riot of August , 1965, Social Prob-

3 I. Newspaperman Don Cormier, quoted in

32, Anthony Oberschall lems,

15 (Winter 1958): 339,

Writing of the behavior of youth gang members and not in reference to any particular riot, Walter B, Miller remarks that observers were struck " by what appeared as a current of enormous excitement - an almost ecstatic perception that all things were possible and all delights within grasp. " It WaS, he says, the sense conveyed by ritualized events the Bacchanalia , the Mardi Gras - when ordinary rules of conduct are suspended. " Even in those cases where the triggering incident was most clearly perceived as a racial affront,

S riots were a manifestation of race and racism in the United States, a reflection of the social problems of modern black ghettos, a protest against the essential conditions of life there , and an indicator of the necessity for fundamental changes in American society, " Robert M. Fogelson "and in Robert B, Hill, " Who Riots? A Study of Participation in the 1967 Riots, p, 243, For much more in the same vein, see RobertM, Supplemental Studies (Garden City, Violence as Protest A Study of Riols and Ghettos Fogelson, : Doubleday & Company, 1971), " and " background" causes , the 41. For the distinction between " accelerating writer is grateful to Bruce Jacobs, that the 1960

42, Oberschall remarks that the Watts riot was the first in which the rioters could , were better

watch their actions on TV, The movements ofthe police, he says

reported than those of the rioters, " By listening to the continuous radio and

the dominant emotions of most gang members appeared to be closer to elation than anger. American Youth Gangs: Past and Present, " in Abraham Blumberg, ed"

A Reader in Criminal Justice

TV coverage , it was possible to deduce that the police were moving towards or away from a particular neighborhood, Those who were active in raiding stores could choose when and where to strike, and still have ample time for retreat. The Los Angeles Riot " pp, 335- 336. served to Janowitz conjectures that the presence of the television camera " " but of greater importance was exacerbate tensions and aggressive behavior television s influence in spreading " the contagion throughout urban areas "and he the nation, The sheer ability ofthe rioters to command media attention, writes, " is an ingredient in developing legitimacy, In highbrow intellectual violence has

(New York: Random

House- Knopf, forthcoming 1974), 33, Governor s Commission on the Los Angeles Riots, Violence in the City- An End or a Beginning?, Los Angeles, December 2 1965, p, 24, 34, Oberschall, ' The Los Angeles Riot, " p, 329, 35, Ibid. , p, 341. Oberschall remarks that the events " constituted a riot rather than anything else. 36, Bayard Rustin, " The Watts ' Manifesto ' and the McCone Report Commentary (March 1966): 30,

37, Professor Grimshaw was one who changed his views, When in 1968 he prepared for publication the remarks he had made at the symposium three years before he appended the following footnote to the passage describing the rioters as " lower- class apathetics" and " new-style indifferents By the middle of 1968 this assertion is no longer true, " In a postscript he observed that a " class as opposed to a " race " interpretation of the " disorders " (he had previously used the term " riotous behavior may be correct in some ways but it is even more (sic) startlingly incorrect in others. " Changing Patterns of Racial Violence " pp, 496 and 500, New York Times July 24, 1967, John Howard, a sociologist who observed 38. the Detroit riot , later wrote that poor whites played a major role in It. He

found the Detroit (and also the Newark) riot to be a " lower- class , rather

Life Styles in the Black Ghetto (New York: Norton, 1969), p. 273, 39. Quoted by E, S. Evans Ghetto Riots and City Politics, " in Louis H. Masotti and Don R, Bowen, eds" Riots and Rebellions: Civil Violence in the Urban Community (Beverly Hills , Calif, : Sage Publications, 1968), p, 402. For a journalist's account of the Detroit riot , see B, J, Widick, Detroit: City of Race than racial, revolt." William McCord et aI.,

and Class Violence

(Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1972), ch, I I.

40. Fogelson and Hill, in a study done for the Kerner Commission, give data on age , sex , birthplace, occupation, and certain other characteristics of persons arrested in the major riots of 1967, They find that " . , , the rioters were a small but significant minority of the Negro population, fairly representative ofthe ghetto residents and especially ofthe young adult males , and tacitly supported by at least a large minority of the brack community. " From this they move to several judgments not derivable from their data: " Which , to repeat, means

circles in the United States, a language of rationalization of developed, The mass media serve to disseminate a popular version of such

justification, Social Control of Escalated Riots pp, 32-33, 43,

New York Times,

December 7, 1967,

44, In a recent study the low-

income sample of an urban population was found to

average 5, 2 hours of television viewing daily as compared with two hours for

the general population, The only significant difference between whites and

Negroes in media use was that Negroes spent less time reading newspapers, Use of the Mass Media by the Bradley S. Greenberg and Brenda Dervin, (New York: Praeger, 1970), Urban Poor New York Times November 7, 1965, 45. ' Whitey Hasn t Got the Mes46, J. Anthony Lukas, " Postscript on Detroit: New York Times Magazine August 27, 1967, p. 44, sage,'" surveys made after the 1967 riots in 47, The principal conclusion of an analysis of their concepDetroit and Newark was that " Negroes who riot do so becausecommensurate tion of their lives and their potential has changed without and Jefimprovement in their chances for a better life, " Nathan S, Caplan 219 (August fery M, Paige, " A Study of Ghetto Rioters, Scientific American, 1968): 21. See also Nathan Caplan, " The New Ghetto Man: A Review of Recent Empirical Studies, Journal of Social Issues 26 (1970): 5Q--73, 48; Jesse Gray, the rent-strike leader, is reported to have addressed of the re aboutone to witness rallies that set off the Harlem riot of 1964 as follows: " in New York City what we have heard about in Mississippi. Somebody has is guerrilla said the only thing that will solve the situation in Mississippi " Shapiro warfare, I'm beginning to wonder what will solve the problem here, Race Riot p. 74, and Sullivan, Spilermau stresses the importance of national television in stimulating

,"

344

THE UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED racial consciousness (" Sights of, , , Negroes being set upon by dogs, beaten, or worse , have enabled them to share a common experience , witness a

common enemy, and in the process develop similar sensitivities and a community of interest ) and also in creating both expectations of help from the

federal government and disappointment when they were not realized, Seymour Spilerman, " The Causes of Racial Disturbances: A Comparison of American Sociological Review 35 (August 1970): 646, Delinquency and Drift Matza,

p, 184, 50, Ibid" p, 95, Alternative Explanations,

49,

Modern guides written for those who work with juveniles stress the importance of supporting the child, Whenever supporting the child leads to statements excusing or understanding his behavior, as they

occasionally must, the precepts of subcultural delinquency are also supported, , , , Statements reinforcing the delinquent's conception ofirresponsibility are an integral part of an ideology of child welfare shared by social work, psychoanalysis, and criminology, This ideology presents a causal

theory of delinquency which, when it attributes fault, directs it to parent, community, society, or even to the victims of crime,

51. Rustin, ' The Watts ' Manifesto,'" p, 30, Vice President Humphrey helped to extenuate the rioting when he said in New Orleans that if he lived in a slum tenement with rats and with no place to go swimming, " You d have more

trouble than you have already, because I've got enough spark left in me to lead a mightygood revolt (sic) under those conditions, New York Times

July 19, 1966,

52, " To over-simplify," Grimshaw writes, " if society at large (or significant and powerful segments of the society) agrees with linguistic labeling of events as criminal' and ' rebellious,' then an atmosphere will be created in which pleas for, , , ' stricter law enforcement' will strike a responsive chord, " But if the same events are identified as " ' a legitimate revolt against impossible conditions' , , , then people will be predisposed to accept solutions which attack sources of the behavior rather than solely problems of control." Allen D,

Grimshaw Theory, Taxonomic, Exotic, Psychological and Sociological " in Racial Violence

Allen D, Grimshaw, ed" 53,

New York Times November 7, 1965,

p, 387,

54, There is a striking parallel between the rhetorical strategy of the civil-rights leaders in the early 1960 S and that of James M ill prior to the passage of the

Reform Bill of 1832, Revolution 55, 56, 57,

See Joseph Hamburger,

James Mill and the Art of

(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1963),

New York Times,

December 16, 1966,

New York Times December 7, 1966, In March 1968, the process of explanation and, by implication, justification reached its apogee with the publication of the report ofthe National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (the Kerner Commission), which found that white racism," poverty, and po~erlessness were mainly responsible for the riots, The next month there were riots in several cities following the assassina-

NOTES FOR CHAPTER 9

345

tion of the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr, Theseand riotsitfollowed the familvandalism, was apparent that iar pattern of looting, burning, and despite all that had been done to give a political these events,a t vengeance," protest.character " It wasn to most rioters were not there in order to Wall Street Jollr/lal April just material gain, Chicago poverty worker said, " New York Times April 12, 1968, 10, 1968, See also goes on to note that Civil Disorder Participation," p, 1069, He 58, McPhail, " most riots began on weekends or in the evenings when the majority of people were free from the competing demands of work and at or near major vehicular or pedestrain intersections in densely populated areas 1070-1071), : Princeton Uni(Princeton, NJ,(pp, The Society of Captives

59, Gresham M, Sykes,

, 67 " disorders " were reported 60, In the summer (June, July, and August) of 1970 by the Lemberg Center for the Study of Violence, 2312ofofwhich whichlasted lasted more more than one day; in the summer of 1971, there were 46, versity Press, 1958), p, 126,

than one day, Two of the 197 I

disorders resulted in the deaths of three

The Long, Hot Slimmer? An Analysis of

: Lemberg Center for the Summer Disorders 1967-1971 (Waltham, Mass,

persons, Jane A, Baskin et aI.,

Study of Violence, Brandeis University, 1972), pp,1973, 9-10,but these years were Comparable data are not available for 1972Newand reported that York Times 1973, the not without riots, On August 13, after the killing by an arresting officer of a man involved in the theft of a school bus bands of youths roved over an area of Queens ten or twelve blocks across, hurling rocks, bottles, and debris at police cars and other vehicles, A crowd of about 400 persons gathered, looted a liquor store, smashed plate glass windows and car windows, and overturned at least two cars, A dozen Molotov cocktails were said to have been thrown at police cars, At least three policemen and three civilians were treated for injuries in Queens General Hospital, two having been beaten by gangs of rampaging youths, Sporadic icemen were moved violence continued for several hours, A bout 150 extra pol into the precinct by bus and dozens of officers in radio cars weretomustered the- last from other precincts, Significantly, the story appeared on the nextand seems not to have been covered by national television, Times page of the carried (on its front page) a Philadelphia Inquirer On October 23, 1973 the A gang of more than 200 teenagers, armed with sticks, story which began: " clubs and iron bars, damaged automobiles, broke windows and fired at least

two shots on busy Broad st. (a main center city street) Monday afternoon, There were no arrests, 61, After a careful review of the evidence, Seymour Spilerman concluded that the only community characteristic affecting thethelikelihood of disorder in the larger it was, the greater the 1960 S was the size of the Negro population: likelihood of disorder. " The Causes of Racial Disturbance," p, 645, 62, Spilerman found that the level of living of Negroes in particular cities, if it affected proneness to disorder at all (good conditions tended to be positively associated with size of Negro population), thedisorders oppositeare effect from what , , ,had racial more likely to the " deprivation " theory would imply: " Nhere the level of life for the Negro is least oppressive according to occur ' objective measures, There are more disturbances where Negro disadvantage, relative to white residents, is small and where Negro attainment surpasses

346 / THE UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED

NOTES FOR CHAPTER 10 I 347

that of Negroes living elsewhere, Moreover , disorder- prone communities tend to have stable populations and better quality housing, " Ibid" pp, 642643, 63, Harlem Youth Opportunities Unlimited, Inc" " Youth in the Ghetto " (New York: multilithed , 1964), p, 20, 64, Spilerman

fed eral

s main conclusion is that the

government, assisted by

national television, helped develop racial solidarity among blacks

and

brought them to base their expectations of improvements in status largely on

cues coming from Washington and, having done so, then exhibited " vacillation , compromise , expedient retreat, and unfunded promises " that " provoke feelings offrustration and betrayal." " The Causes of Racial Distur- must bance, " p, 646,

If the situation has not changed in some crucial respect, his analysis sug-

gests that the likelihood of

future

riots depends much less upon the objective

conditions of the Negro (and hardly at all upon differences in these from one city to another) than upon his response to cues conveyed to him by television from Washington, If this be the case , the prospect is poor indeed, For, despite the vacillation, compromise , expedient retreat, and unfunded promises of the middle 1960

, the attitude of Negroes toward the national government was

then one of trust as compared to what despite dramatic increases in federal spending on " people- helping " programs and dramatic improvements in black incomes and schooling it has since become, According to a Survey Research Center report in the summer of 1973, trust in the national government has fallen steadily since the middle 1960 S, the rate of decline among blacks being

, 1973,

four

times that among

whites,

New York Times

August

CHAPTER 10 The Future of the Lower Class The quotation at the head of the chapter is

from Newcomb' Principles of Po(New York, Harper and Brothers , 1886), p, 533, The one from Lend a Hand (Boston, 1886), vol. I, p, 8, I, Walter B, Miller, " The Elimination of the American Lower Class as National Policy: A Critique of the Ideology of the Poverty Movement of the 1960 " in Daniel p, Moynihan, ed" On Understanding Poverty (New York: Basic Books, 1969), ch, 10, 2, Quoted by Tom Kahn in his contribution to a symposium on " Nixon , the Great Society and The Future of Social Policy, " in Commentary, 55 (May 1973): 43, (Italics appear in Kahn s essay but not in Harrington s book,

litical Economy

Mrs, Fields is from

3, Coleman finds the claim that a very high level of income support would establish levels of work motivation and consumer wisdom necessary self-sufficiency " probably ble, , , , " James S, Coleman,

Interscience , 197 I), p, 68,

nonsense ,

for

even if it were economically feasi-

Resotfl'cesfor Social Change

(New York: Wiley-

4, For a somewhat different perspective on the origins of the War on Poverty see Lester C, Thurow The Political Econo my of Income Redistribution Policies, Annals of the Ameris;..an Academy of Political an d Social Science 409 (September 1973), pp, 146-155, The origins of the Model Cities program are described in Edwardc. Banfield, " Making a New Federal Program " in Allan (Boston: Case Studies Six in America; Policy and Politics p, Sindler, ed" Little , Brown and Company, 1973), pp, 125- 158, Selling National Priorities , The 1973 Budget 5, Charles L. Schultze et aI., Brookings Institution, 1972), p, I I. (Washington, Political Entrepre6, On the New Haven experience , see Russell D, Murphy, (Lexington, Mass, : Heath Lexington Books, 197 I), neurs and Urban Poverty I49, 7,

Work

in

America

(Cambridge, Mass, :

MIT Press, 1973), p, 184, It is of

which force (Boston: Little , Brown and for the life style Company, 1967) is that blocked opportunity mainly accounts of the streetcorner men, Coleman finds that his data are inconsistent with this

passing interest that Elliot Liebow was a member of the task s Corner prepared this report. His thesis in

Tally

thesis and suggests instead " that the whole pattern and orientation of the

neighborhood as well as the disabilities in the men s relations to one another made them unable to work steadily (italics added), James S,

and to women, Coleman,

Resourcesfor Social Change

p, 66,

As to the merits of the claim that the assurance of stable employment at a living wage will benefit marriage and the family, Reynolds Farley asserts (apropos of black, not lower- class families) that the evidence indicates that raising incomes will not significantly affect the structure of the family and that even if black and white family " stability " were the same , differences in education and occupation in the next generation would still be substantial. Family Types and Family Headship: A Comparison of Trends Among Blacks and Whites, Journal of Human Resources 6 (Summer 1971): 296, 8, Lee Rainwater, " The Lessons ofPruitt- Igoe, The Public Interest 8 (Summer 1967): 123, Thurow takes a similar position: " Undoing low skill levels and poor work habits among adults is simply a slow , expensivejob, As our knowledge of education increases, it appears that the critical years occur at earlier ages, " The Political Economy ofincome Redistribution Policies, : 15I. 9, Alvin W, Gouldner, " The Secrets of Organizations, " in The Social Welfare Forum Proceedings . of the National Conference on Social Welfare (New York: Columbia University Press, 1963), p, 175,

(Chicago: Aldine Publishing Company, Behind Ghello Walls 1970), p, 418, Anselm Strauss, also a sociologist, remarks that " there is

10, Lee Rainwater,

usually a lag of at least one generation before life styles respond to changed (Chicago: Aldine Publishing Company, incomes, Where Medicine Fails 1970), p, 2-6,

I I, Theodore W, Schultz, " The Increasing Economic Value of Human Time American Journal of Agricultural Economics 54 (December 1972): 843in Human Capital: The Role of Education and Investment 850, See also his (New York: The Free Press. 1971), of Research Works (London: Trubner and Co" 1864), 7: 1II, Astudyin 12, Theodore Parker, Providence, R, , in 1865 of age-specific mortality by income class showed that the infant mortality rate among income- taxpayers was 93 per 1 000 live

,"

,"

348 / THE UNHEA VENL Y CITY REVISITED

NOTES FOR CHAPTER 10 / 349

births as against 193 among non- income- taxpayers, Cited in Odin W, Anderson, " Infant Mortality and Social and Cultural Factors: Historical Trends and Current Patterns, " in E, Gartly Jaco, ed" Patients, Physicians, and Illness (New York: The Free Press, 1958), pp, 10-22, In 1911- 1916 a study in seven cities showed a total infant mortality rate of . 210, 9 per 1, 000 live births in the lowest income group (father had no earnings) and only 59, 1 in the highest (father s income $ 1, 250 and over), That the high rates had more to do with class culture than with poverty per se is

suggested by the fact that the Jews , although they lived in tenements as overcrowded as any, had extremely low infant mortality rates. Robert M, Woodbury, Causal Factors in Infant Mortality: A Statistical Study Based on Investigation in Eight Cities S, Children s Bureau Publication No, 142 (Washington, D. c.: U. S, Government Printing Office 13, James J, Walsh Irish Mortality in New York and Pennsylvania, Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review 10 (December 1921): 632; see also Austin Malley, " Irish Vital Statistics in America Studies: An Irish Quarterly

, 1925), p. 157.

Review

(December 1918): 623- 632.

Leonard Woolf, in Sowing, An Autobiography of the Years 1880 to 1904 (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co" 1960) recalls (pp, 61- 64) the amazing disappearance of appalling lower- class slums in a few years. In his remarkably vivid and authentic account of Salford (Manchester) . slum life in the first quarter of the century, Robert Roberts finds the First World War to be the watershed of change, The Classic Slum , Sa/ford Life in the First Quarter of the Century (Manchester: University of Manchester Press, 1971. Republished in 1973 by Penguin Books, Baltimore, Md,

14. Data associating mortality with socioeconomic characteristics other than occupation were not collected by the Census until 1960. Some data for 1930-1960 exist for five socioeconomics areas of Chicago, however, See Evelyn M. Kitagawa Socioeconomic Differences in Mortality in the United States and Some Implications for Population Policy, " U. S. Commission on Population Growth and the American Future , in Charles F, Westoff and Jr. , oos. Demographic and Social Aspects of Population Growth vol. I of Commission Research Reports (Washington, D, : Govern-

Robert Parke ,

ment Printing Office ,

1972), p. 105.

15. On the necessity of changing life style in order to reduce deaths from infant mortality, see C. V, Willie and W. B, Rothney, " Racial , Ethnic and Income Factors in the Epidemiology of Neonatal Mortality, American Sociological Review 27 (August 1962): 526. On the other hand , H. M. Brenner has recently found that economic recessions and upswings have played a significant role in fetal, infant, and maternal mortality in the last half century and have probably been responsible for the apparent lack of continuity in the decline of infant mortality rates since 1950, " Fetal, Infant , and Maternal Mortality During Periods of Economic Instability, International Journal of Health Services 16.

3 (1973), pp, 145- 159, (Washington, D. c.: G.

O" March 1973), p. 63. For opposed views on the extent of birth-control knowledge among " the poor, " see Judith Blake, ' :Ropulation Policy for Americans: Is the Government Being Misled?, Science 164 (May 2 , 1969): 522- 529; and Oscar KarManpower Report of the President

kavy, Frederick S. Jaffe , and Samuel M. Wiskik, " Family Planning and

165 (July 25, 1969): Public Policy: Who Is Misleading Whom? Science, 367- 373, The latter article cites (p, 371) a study which found that approximately 40 percent of births to poor and near- poor couples, as opposed to 14 percent to nonpoor couples, were unwanted by one or both parents in the

years 1960 to 1965,

Tally s Corner p, 2 I 6, Philp, in his account of British " families with multiple problems, " remarks that " many men relied excessively on the sexual relationship for reassurance about themselves, They took pride in the size of their families and some spoke openly of this as an indication of their potency and superiority over others, . , , In general the men neither took steps to limit their families nor approved of their wives doing so, , , , " The women, too, " seemed to find some reassurance " in motherhood, " Family limitation is unlikely to be accepted by them until they can come to feel that they have more value in other areas oftheir lives but in general they do not seem to feel Family Failure , A Study of 129 Families with Multiple this, " A, F. Philp, (London: Faber and Faber Ltd., 1961), pp. 278--279, Problems 18. The probability of pregnancy resulting from occasional nonuse or misuse of a contraceptive is higher than one might suppose, Michael has calculated that if a couple use a technique which is 90 percent effective , in a fifteen- year period their expected fertility outcome will be 2, 7 births (assuming the period of

I7, Cf, Liebow,

infertility associated with pregnancy to be seventeen months), Robert T,

Michael, " Education and the Derived Demand for Children, Journal of 81 (Part 2, March/April 1973): S141. Political Economy, 19. Jane A, Menken, ' Teenage Childbearing: Its Medical Aspects and ImplicaDemotions for the United States Population, " in Westoff and Parke, eds" graphic and Social Aspects of Population Growth pp, 335- 353, In 1968, more than 200, 000 births occurred to girls age seventeen or younger (ibid" p,

335~

20, John F, Kantner and Melvin Zelnik, " Contraception

and Pregnancy: Experi-

ence of Young Unmarried Women in the United States, Family Planning Perspectives 5 (Winter 1973): 22, From interviews in 197 I with a national sample of 4, 6 I I young women the authors found that among sexually experi-

enced unmarried girls aged 15- 19 less than half(A7 percent) reported having used contraception at the time of last intercourse and less than one- fifth (18 percent) reported using it " always, " As one might expect, the more schooling a girl's mother had had and the higher the income of her family, the more likely she was to report having used contraception " last time " and "always. The percentages reporting using it " last time " by schooling of mother, were: 36, 7 (elementary), 45, I (high school), and 62, 0 (college), Among white re-

spondents, 61 percent of girls from families with incomes of more than $ I 5, 000 reported using it " last time " as compared with 40 percent of girls

from families with incomes below $3, 000. For blacks, the percentages were 48 and 20 respectively,

A report on the experience of a cohort of adolescents who, after having had a first illegitimate child, became subjects of " an intensive effort to encourage contraceptive use" is especially instructive. Within three years, about half had

become pregnant again (the same proportion as in a control group) and a majority were not using birth control continuously. However, about 40 percent of those who remained single

did

use it continuously, Frank Furstenberg,

,"

,"

,"

pp,

,"

350 / THE UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED

NOTES FOR CHAPTER 10 / 351

G, S, Masnick , and Susan A, Ricketts How Can Family Planning Programs Delay Repeat Teenage Pregnancies? Family Planning Perspectives 4 (July 1972): 54- 60,

One can imagine an animal angry, frightened, unhappy, happy, startled, But hopeful? And why not? A dog believes his master is at the door. But can he also believe his what can he not do master will come the day after to-morrow? - And here? - How do I do it? - How am I supposed to answer this? Can only those hope who can talk? Only those who have mastered the use of a language, That is to say, the phenomena of hope are modes of this complicated form of life, , , .

A report based on the 1970 National Fertility Study showed that though the pill and intrauterine devices (IUD) have cut the risk of contraceptive . failure in halfin the last 10 years within a year s time 14 percent ofa sample of 752 married or previously married women had an unwanted pregnancy and

26 percent got pregnant sooner than they planned, Over a five-

year period, a third of the women who wanted to delay or prevent pregnancy failed to do so, The failure rate was relatively high among young women; schooling did not seem to be a significant factor, Success " depends in large part on the degree of

motivation of the couple concerned,

Norman B, Ryder

2!.

" a director of the study concluded,

Contraceptive Failure in the United States, Family Planning Perspectives Vol. 5, No, 3 (Summer , 1973), pp, 133- 142, Philips Cutright, " Illegitimacy in the United States: 1920-1968, in Westoff and Parke, eds" Demographic and Social Aspects of Population "Growth 423 and 426,

Families of the Slums (New York: Basic Books , 1967), Salvador Minuchin and his colleagues report on the effort of a team of specialists to test a technique of therapy on twelve " hard core " delinquentproducing with a control group of ten families that were similar except for notfamilies having, delinquent children, After a series of thirty one-and-onehalf- hour sessions over a period of about eight months in which two therapists and (usually) a caseworker talked to all members of the family except children under the age of six, the researchers concluded that seven of the twelve were clinically improved, The criteria of improvement were not operationally defined and varied from family to family. On the limitations of psychotherapy as a technique for changing personality, see H. J, Eysenck, " The Effects of Psychotherapy: An Evaluation, Journal of Consulting Psychology, 16 (October 1952): 319-324, 23. A. B, Hollingshead and F, C, Redlich Social Class and Mental Illness (New York: Wiley, 1958), p, 348, See also J, Myers and L. Schaffer, " Social Stratification and Psychiatric Practice: A Study of an OutPatient Clinic American Sociological Review 19 (June 1954): 310, and Zahava 0, Blum and Peter H, Rossi in Moynihan, ed" On Understanding Poverty, pp, 384- 386, 24, For an empirical test of Bernstein s theories see W, p, Robinson and Susan J, Rackstraw A Question of Answers (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul , 2 vols" 1972), For a critical review of work in this field , and of that of Bernstein in particular, see Denis Lawton Social Class, Language , and Education (New York: Schocken Books , 1968), The writings of Bernstein on the account in the text is based are the following: " Some Sociologicalwhich Determinants of Perception British Journal of Sociology, 9 (1958); ' The Role of Speech in the Development and Transmission of Culture Klopf and William A. Holman , eds" Perspectives on Learning " in Gordon J, (New York: Mental Health Materials Center , Inc" 1967); and " Social Structure , Language and Learning " in Joan I, Roberts, ed" School Children in the Urban Slum (New York: The Free Press, 19!i7), 22, In

25, Bernstein

Social Structure

" p, 145,

26. A passage from Wittgenstein

Philosophical Investigations

Macmillan , 1953), p, 174, is suggestive:

(New York:

27. Josephine Klein has argued that ego control presupposes the ability to take the consequences of one s actions into account , i, e" foresight, and that " words are needed to create a conception of an orderly universe in which rationally considered action is more likely to be rewarded than impulsive behavior. Social Class p, 15,

Quoted in Lawton,

28, For example , it has been found that illiterates tend to have a " present- tense outlook" (Howard E. Freeman and Gene G, Kassebaum The Illiterate in American Society: Some General Hypotheses, Social Forces 34, May 1956: 375); sufferers from aphasia tend to behave in a present-oriented manner (Alfred R, Lindsmith and Anselm L. Strauss,

Social Psychology,

rev, ed.

New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1956, p, 143); persons who have

29,

undergone lobotomy appear indifferent to the future (Paul Fraisse The Psychology of Time New York: Harper & Row, 1963, p. 172). (New York: The Free Press, 1968), p, The Empty Fortress Bruno Bettelheim, 48,

Development of Ritualization " in Donald R, Cutler, The Religious Situation 1968 (Boston: Beacon Press, 1968), p, 714, (February Midstream Zena Smith Blau, " In Defense of the Jewish Mother,

30, Erik H, Erikson, " The ed"

3!.

1967): 47, 32. Lee Rainwater,

And the Poor Get Children

1960), pp, 82- 83,

(Chicago: Quadl-angle Books,

" in Maria

33, Lois Barclay Murphy, " Infants' Play and Cognitive Development, (New York: W, W, Norton & Company, Play and Development W, Piers, ed"

1972), pp, 119-126, Perhaps it should be noted that Dr. Murphy does not

seem to regard the mothers ' behavior as reflecting class culture, The children whose development is encouraged by play are " middle class " but the others are " extremely deprived children from disorganized, overcrowded ghetto apartments ; she suggests that it is because the mothers are " destitute" and exhausted" that they do not play with the children, Wilson , on the basis of longitudinal studies of twins, concludes that it requires unusual conditions, such as serious prematurity or impoverishment of the environment , to cause a major deflection from the " genetic blueprint that normally controls the mental development of infants in their first two years, " In all likelihood, however," he adds, " there may be a cumulative latent influence absorbed from the home environment during infancy that

combines with genetic predisposition and gradually becomes manifest as school age approaches; since the child' s measured IQ becomes increasingly related to his parents' IQ, educational level, and socioeconomic status- as he

gets older." Ronald S, Wilson, " Twins: Early Mental Development, Science 175 (February 25, 1972): 914- 917. 34, Jerome Kagan, " Cross- Cultural Perspectives on Early Development," paper

,"

352 / THE UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED

NOTES FOR CHAPTER IO / 353

presented as an invited address to the Annual

Meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science , Washington, D. C" December

, 1972,

Lawrence Kohlberg (also an educational psychologist at Harvard) asserts that " moral character " is " not fixed early in life in the family " and that no basis exists in research to doubt that a " ghetto " child put in a suburban home (or vice versa) will be morally like his age mates. " Moral Effects of Psycho logical Deprivation: Some Research Directions, " position paper for Task Force on Socio- Emotional Development and Psychosocial Deprivation, National Institute of Child Health and Development , multilithed , undated, 35, Harold M, Skeels Adult Status of Children with Contrasting Early Life Experiences Monographs ofthe Society for Research in Child Development, vol. 3 I, no. 3, serial no. 105 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press , 1966), 36. Human Interaction Research Institute, " A Study of Successful Persons From Seriously Disadvantaged Backgrounds " Report for Office of Special Manpower Programs , U. S, Department of Labor, Mimeographed , March3 1, 1970, Los Angeles. Contract No. 82-0568-03,

Medical

803- 820, 96 (August 1968): gray " market 43, In fact, there are " gray " and " black" markets in babies, The " (legal in all but two states) involves use of a lawyer rather than an adoption agency; in the " black" market the child is simply bought (although the payment to the mother may be called a " gift" ), the birth certificate sometimes being falsified, According to the executive director of the Child Welfare League of America, it is becoming " rather normal" to pay $ 10, 000 in a " gray is expanding or " black" market. " The baby business, " he is quoted as saying, " all over the country, New York Times February 20, 1973, 44, Arthur R, Jensen, in Martin Deutsch, Irwin Katz, and Arthur R, Jensen,

(New York: Holt, Social Class , Race , and Psychological Development Rinehart & Winston, 1968), p, 166, (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, The Drifters Eleanor Pavenstedt, ed" eds"

45,

1967), p, 199,

46, Ibid" p, 2 I 8, Another account, this one of an effort to establish a play center for a group of slum children in London in 1942, concludes: " I do not see much hope for my gang, What we could do for them was only patchwork and the result is most doubtful. The pattern oflife in which they are growing up in that

The literature on the effect of father absence is reviewed by Urie Bronfen-

community is already shaped and has moulded the very structure of their

Separation from Parents During Early Childhood

L. Hoffman and L. W, Hoffman, Research

eds"

Review of Child Development

(New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1964), I: 128.

brenner in his essay in Vernon L. Allen , ed" Psychological Factors in Poverty (Chicago: Markham Publishing Company, 1970), p. 2/7. Recent data , based on a small number of comparisons, are given by Thomas S, Langer and his collaborators in another essay in the same volume. In 1972 the Iowa State Supreme Court in an 8-0 ruling, held that a pair of four- year-old twins must be placed up, for adoption because their mother

whose IQ was 47, could not give them proper care and attention, Expert

39,

M, D" " Child Abuse Syndrome: A Review

Times Magazine

" in M,

37, Leon J. Yarrow

38,

42, Cf, Larry B. Silver ,

witnesses testified that the twins were in poor condition due chiefly to " lack of stimulation " and " need of love and affection. New York Times October 19, 1972, In colonial Massachusetts children were taken from poor , incompetent, neglectful parents as a matter of course, Noting that the Town of Boston "or grown considerably populous , and the idle and poor much increased, , , " the Province of Massachusetts enacted in 173536 do " That their children in such gross ignorance that they not where know persons bring up , or are not able to distinguish , the alphabet or twenty- four letters , at the age six yearsto , input such cases the overseers of the poor are hereby impowered andofdirected or bind out into good families , such children, for a decent and Christian education, as when parents are indigent and rated nothing to the publick taxes the children are judged uncapable , through some inevitable infirmity,, unless " The author is indebted to Martin Shefter for this reference, Cf, Leontine Young, Wednesday s Children: A Study of Child Neglect and Abuse (New York: McGraw- Hili, 1964),

40, Personal communication,

41. K. B. Cheney, " Safeguarding

(London: George Branch Street , A Sociological Study beings, " Marie Paneth, Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1944), pp, 125- 126, 47, An elaborate study of the WIN (Work Incentive) Program makes an opposite recommendation: that welfare payments for children be channeled through fathers instead of directly to mothers " to the end of constraining marital dissolution and buttressing paternal authority, , , , " It is not clear, however, whether the fathers in question are of the sort described here as lower claos, Samuel Z, Klausner, " The Work Incentive Program: Making Adults Economically Independent" (Philadelphia, Center for Research on the Acts of Man, 1972), p, xvii,

48, Personal communication from James Q, Wilson, The Subculture of Violence 49, Marvin E, Wolfgang and Franco Ferracuti, (London: Tavistock Publications, 1967), p, 299, They cite (p, 304) a study showing that rates for major crimes are lower in cities where the class structure is " balanced, " See also Jack Lessinger, " The Case for Scatteration, Journal of the A merican Institute of Planners 28 (August 1962): 159-169, The Disabled and the Law of 50, Jacobus TenBroek and Floyd, W. Matson, " Welfare, California Law Review 54 (May 1966): 816, Cloward and Piven complain that " the threatened denial of essential the benefits is a powerful sanction to control client behavior. " Presumably, main cause of complaint is the unwarranted identification of " client " with semicompetent. " Richard A. Cloward and Frances Fox Piven, " The Professional Bureaucracies: Benefit Systems as Influence Systems, " in Murray Sil(New berman, ed"

Legal Rights in Providing Protective Service

Children 13 (May-June 1966): 86-92. "",v

The Role of Government in Promoting Social Change

York: Columbia University School of Social Work, 1965), p, 54, Reprinted in (rev, ed" New York: The Free Press, Urban Government E, C, Banfield, ed" 1968), pp, 666-681,

,"

,"

354 / THE UN HEAVENLY CITY REVISITED

NOTES FOR CHAPTER I I / 355

CHAPTER I I What Can Be Done?

The quotation at the head of the chapter is from David McClelland Lucian Pye ,

ed"

Communications and Political Development

Princeton University Press , 1963), p. 152,

I. Leo C. Rosten Hollywood, the Movie York: Harcourt Brace , 1941), p, 40,

2. Frank H. Knight

Freedom and Reform

41-42,

, writing in

(Princeton, N,

Colony, the Movie Makers

(New

(New York: Harper, 1947),

pp.

3, Kenneth J. Arrow New York Times Op Ed page , March 26 , 1973, 4, Albert K. Cohen Delinquent Boys: The Culture of the Gang (New York: The Free Press, 1955), pp, 176-177,

5, Worth Bateman and Harold M, Hochman Social Problems and the Urban Crisis: Can Public Policy Make a Difference? American Economic Review 61 (May 197 I): 352, 6, Jerome Bruner

in Sterling McMurrin , ed. The Conditions of Educational (New York: Committee for Economic Development , 1971), p, 60, 7, Jencks, op, cit. , p, 180, 8, Lee Rainwater Crucible of Identity: The Negro LowerClass Family, " in Talcott Parsons and Kenneth B. Clark, eds. The Negro American (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1966), p, 199, Equality

9, 10,

Wall Street Journal February 16 , 1968 , p, 9. a review of the literature of " expectancy theory, " Gerald and Patricia

In

Gurin conclude that " success experiences and reality changes in opportunities probably can be used to raise the expectancies of low expectancy people but they add that " studies consistently stress that this be done under conditions where a person feels that the successes come from his own skill and competence. (Italics supplied. Expectancy Theory in the Study of Poverty, Journal of Social Issues 26 (1970), p. 97, Martin E. p, Seligman, in an important work relating experimental findings on animals to human psychology, suggests that what produces self-esteem and a sense of competence is not so much the absolute quality of experience as " the perception of whether your

own actions controlled the experiences, " Even when pleasurable , events which are felt to be uncontrollable tend to undermine " ego strength" controllable events, by contrast, tend to produce a sense of mastery even ;when unpleasant, " It is highly significant, " Seligman remarks that when rats and pigeons are given a choice between getting free food and getting the same food for putting out responses , they choose to work,

Francisco , W, H. Freeman and Company, forthcoming, II. Sar A, Levitan, Martin Rein

Helplessness

1974),

(San

Work Welfare Go Together (Baltimore , Johns Hopkins University Press, 1972), pp. 123-124, See also E. C. Banfield Welfare: A Crisis Without ' Interest 16 (Summer 1969): 89-101. See also HenrySolutions,' J. Aaron,"" The Public Why is Welfare So Hard to Reform? Studies in Social Economics (Washington, D, The Brookings Institution, 1973), , and David Marwick,

Violence in the 12, Governor s Commission on the Los Angeles Riots, Los Angeles, December 2, 1965, p, 55, An End or a Beginning?, City (New York: WileyResources for Social Change 13. James S, Coleman, Interscience, 197 I), pp, 60-74, Nathan Glazer has argued that the supposed Housing social benefits from the improvement of housing are mostly myth, " The Public Interest 7 (Spring 1967): 21- 60. Problems and Housing Policies," (New York: David McKay, forthRace and Economics 14, Thomas Sowell, coming 1974), ch. 8, See also Muth, who points out that measures which reduce the earnings of poor- relative to good- quality housing (for example strict enforcement of building and occupancy codes , rent strikes, and public receivership of slum dwellings), while they may be beneficial to the poor in

the short run, harm them in the long run by reducing the housing opportunities available to them below what they would otherwise be, Richard Muth, , ed" The Urban Economy and Public Problems," in John P. Crecine

Urban Affairs Annual Reviews, vol. 4 (Berkeley, Calif, : Sage Publications, 1970), pp. 452- 453, Robert K. 15, James S. Coleman, " Community Disorganization and Conflict," in(New York, Merton and Robert Nisbet, eds" Contemporary Social Problems I), p. 676. For a case-study Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc" 3rd edition, 197 Wildavsky, of such problems, see Jeffrey L. Pressman and Aaron (Berkeley, Calif, : University of California Press, 1973), Implementation 16, According to Janowitz, the practice in the past " was to apply an embargo on news about a riot during the actual period of the riot. After the event, it would (Chicago: be covered, " Morris Janowitz Social Control of Escalated Riots Financing the Metropolis,

University of Chicago Press , 1968), p, 34, urbanologists" than 17. Perhaps no one reform has been more strongly urged by " the loosening of zoning and other barriers that reduce movement by the poor

and the black into suburban and fringe areas wherejob and other opportunities are better, Politicians, however, have consistently found it impossible to

support such measures. Thus, a few days before the presidential election, Senator George McGovern told the press that he opposed federal efforts to I believe fervently,"

force low- income, scatter-site housing on communities. " he said, " that while new housing opportunities out of the ghetto are both

needed and desirable for America s urban poor, that the residents of all com-

munities where such federally backed communities are being considered should be consulted fully at every step of the planning. A Government which makes arbitrary decisions and then thrusts these decisions on the citizenry is October 28, 1972, p, 35, no Government at all, New York Times, The State Urban Development

Corporation of New York ,

a body

established in 1968 with power to override local zoning ordinances, lost those powers early in 1973 by agreement of Governor Rockefeller and thedecided leaderfinally ship of the legislature. The governor was reported to have " strong enough to that the opposition to the U, C, in suburban areas was New York Times, present a real threat to his own hopes for a fifth term, , , , May 20, 1973, p, 28. For an account of the devices by which state laws and court decisions Wall Street against " snob zoning " are frustrated in many places, see the Journal October 17, 1972.

, "

NOTES FOR CHAPTER 12

356 / THE UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED 18, See Lee Rainwater and William L. Yancey,

The Moynihan Report and the Politics of Controversy (Cambridge , Mass, I.T, Press, 1967), 19, See Mancur Olson, Jr. The Logic of Collectil'e: M, Action (Cambridge , Mass, Harvard University Press, 1965),

20, See Anthony Downs Why the Government Budget Is Too Small in a Democracy, World Politics 12 (July 1960): 541563, 21. One item on the list day-care centers for children is popular. In July 1969 a Gallup Poll found that almost two out of every three adults favored using federal funds to set up day-care centers in communities across the nation,

357

Godkin would not be surprised at a British social scientist's finding that the median number of words in a half- hour essay by working- class fifteenit is 348, year-olds is 228, whereas for middle- class children of the same age (New York: Social Class , Language , and Education Cited in Denis Lawton, Schocken Books, 1968), p, 105,

As an example of the new style of politics, consider the interfaith organization of New York City clergymen that threatened that it might support violence if it resulted from a cut in the state welfare budget (a cut that, incidentally,

l 27,

would have left the welfare budget at an all- time April 4, 1969, p, I.

A recent report by the National Commission on the Reform of Secondary Education, a body which mayor may not reflect public opinion (it consisted of educators and private citizens),

high),

New York Times

recommends lowering the compulsory

attendance age to fourteen and changing laws to assure those who leave

CHAPTER

school at that age employment and on-

the-job training, New York Times November 29, 1973, 22, With respect toone of the recommendations , the well-off have an interest that is opposed to that of the poor: In the trade-off between inflation and unemployment (and some economists deny that there is one), the well-off and the

poor would in general have different optima, 23, When President Nixon devalued the dollar and inaugurated a wage-

price Wall Street Journal reported, Economic aides are buoyed: their concerns are no longer secondary to the President. They re ' doing something,' not just waiting for favorable statistics to turn up, Even those who religiously opposed wage- price controls plunge enthusiastically into planning now." (August 27, 197 I.) Italics added, freeze , his underlings were " invigorated, "

the

The Prospect (Garden City, N,

2, The projections are from Denis F, Johnston, " The Future of Work: Three (May 1972): 9, Monthly Labor Review Possible Alternatives," (Washington, D, c.: G, O., March 3,

evident that the president was leaning toward F AP not least because

the risks involved, 24, Lionel Trilling,

The Liberal Imagination

1953), p, 213, 25, These matters are discussed

in

(Garden City, N,

: Anchor Books,

E, C, Banfield and James Q, Wilson,

(Cambridge

City

, Mass, : Harvard University Press, 1963), especially chs, 8-10 and pp, 329-346, Politics

..o~

26, E. L. Godkin, " The Duty of Educated Men in a Democracy, (1894): 50,

The Forwn

The Manpower Report of the President

1973) says (p, 63): " , if the average net annual reduction in the absolute number in low- income groups (about 1.1 million persons per year, I 959 to I 97 I) can be maintained in the future, the result would be the virtual

elimination of the low- income

(New York: Random House

Men who counsel caution in a president do him no disservice , but they do not add much to his day, At the very top of government there ought to be some occasional moment of high spirits, of brave abandon: to seek a newer world, " The constraints are everywhere, No one can get to be president without knowing almost too much about them, There are uses for a measure of incaution, (Arthur) Burns was no doubt right (in his apprehensions about the proposed guaranteed income plan), but where was the glory in always being right if it meant never being bold? Why become president always to be careful? At the end of the day it was

(January 1963):

121.

, even a President wants the thrill of The Politics of a Guaranteed Income , The Nixon

1973), p, 165, Daniel p, Moynihan writes:

Journal of Business

I. Kenneth Boulding, book review in the

In the opinion of a close observer

doing something, " In Administration and the Family Assistance Plan

The Liberal Imagination : Anchor Books, 1953), pp, 214- 215,

The quotation at the head of the chapter is from

group (as presently defined) in about two

n this rate

decades. " The report adds, however, that it may be difficult to sustai of progress because the smaller low- income group is likely to consist of more difficult cases, In the opinion of RobertJ, Lampman, " it appears unlikely that

poverty will be completely eliminated before 1980 unless some new and extraordinary measures are taken, Ends and Means of Reducing Income

(Chicago: Markham Publishing Company, 1971), p, 132, Johnston, " The Future of Work, " p, 7, projects dependency ratios (number of Poverty

4,

persons not in the labor force divided by number who are) as: 1960 (actual),

1.50; 1970 (actual), 1.39; 1980, I. I 9 (assuming the two-child norm of the

Census s Series E); and 2000 , I. 10 (on the same assumption), For estimates of the effect of changes in age structure on anest rates, see Dimensions of Peter A. Morrison, " The Effects of Changing Age Structure," (Santa Monica, Calif, : The Rand in the United States the POPlllation Problem Corporation, Monograph R- 864- CPG, August 1972), p, 17, The estimates used in the text of the numbers of young males in the future population are

from Irene B. Taeuber, " Growth of Population in the United States in the and the Twentieth Century," in U, S, Commission on Population Growth Demoeds" Amerir;an Future, Charles F, Westoff and Robert Parke, Jr" graphic and Social Aspects of Population Growth vol. 1 of Commission Research Reports (Washington, D,

70,

: Government Printing Office, 1972),